With a lineup nearly devoid of NHL caliber players our Pittsburgh Penguins Prospects plopped as an equally weakened Wings lineup soared.
There wasn’t a whole lot of bright spots last night. Detroit Red Wings jumped on our boys of winter early and often, out shooting the Black-and-Gold 13 – 6 in the First period.
the Recap
1st Goal
I knew it was going to be a long night when at 15:20 of the first period Nathan Légaré got called for hooking when Wings Defenseman Gustav Lindstrom felt the Penguins Prospect’s stick on him and clamped down on it making it look like Right Wing (RW) was hooking when Lindstrom was the one holding on to his opponents stick.
The Penguins’ Penalty Killers (PK) did their job for the full 2 minutes of the Penalty, but 2 seconds after Légaré’s skates hit the ice after the Penalty expired the Wings Forwards out muscled the Penguin defenders down low and cashed in to take the lead. Rookie Wing’s Defenseman, Moritz Seider blasted a point shot that Casey DeSmith redirected to his stick side corner. Wings Forward and Pittsburgh native, Riley Barber reversed the rebound behind the Penguins net to Joe Veleno. Veleno pushed it along to Taro Hirose. Circling off the boards Hirose found Veleno off on DeSmith’s glove side. Niclas Almari dropped to one knee to block a Centering pass, but drift with his back to the net Veleno took a back hand that rebounded off DeSmith up into the low slot. With Almari kneeling on the ice, Taylor Fedun stuck on the wrong side of the puck, outside the slot and Kasper Björkqvist coming into support from his off-Wing, Puis Suter beat them all to the puck and buried it into the back of the Penguins Goal to grab a 1 – 0 lead against our wingless waddling waterfowl.
The Wings took that lead into the locker room at the end of the Period.
2nd Goal
Filip Hronek extended the home teams lead against our Penguins at 6:06 of the 2nd Period. The Wings dumped the puck into the Penguins zone but Detroit’s fore checker Chase Pearson lost an edge on his skate and lost control of the puck. Juuson Riikola kicked the puck up the boards to teammate and fellow Finnish countryman Valtteri Puustenin. The Penguins’ rookie winger dumped the puck out of the zone and out of harms way but Hronek gathered the puck back in for the Red Wings with Radim Zohorna giving chase for the Pens but Hronek went cross rink to his partner Marc Staal. Staal fed the puck back up to center ice for Pearson. With Puustenin, Zohorna already providing back pressure and Riikola stepping up on the play in the Neutral Zone, Dominik Simon decided to wander over to the Penguins Right Wing as well.
With 4 Penguins playing chase the puck along their RW boards, Staal got to the loose puck first and easily found Sam Gagner, all by himself by the Penguins blue line on the opposite boards. With no other support, Pierre-Olivier Joseph closed on Gagner to pressure him. Unfortunately, since Simon decided to chase the puck to the right, it was like the parting of the Red Sea and Gagner dumped the puck to wide open ice for Hronek to race up into the chasm and get what was close to a break away. The Wing’s Defenseman made it look easy, ripping the puck short side past DeSmith’s glove hand.
3rd Goal
On a Power Play (PP) Mike Matheson drifted right to left, across Center Point drawing the Wings’ PK’s attention with him, opening up ice for Puustenin. Matheson then sent the puck back against the grain of the rotating defense. Drew O’Connor made a tight turn in the high slot to open up for what would be the eventual pass from his teammate. Anthony Angello was parked in Patric Hornqvist old house, making life miserable for Detroit’s Goalie, Thomas Greiss. Calmly, coolly, O’Connor turned down the slot toward the net with 3 defenders closing in on him. Pulling the puck from backhand to forehand he wristed the puck past Greiss to pull the Pens with in 1.
Oh, and what of Simon. He was on the ice too. Well he was safely tucked away on along the boards only coming into the play as the puck hit the twine.
And that is the way it stood at the end of 2 Periods; the Wings leading 2 – 1 and out shooting the Black-and-Gold 30 – 17.
4th Goal
Simon evened the score 2 – 2 at 4:02 of the 3rd Period.
No, this was not a well-earned Goal (G) though. Don’t hail the ersatz Penguins’ LW. He was dogging it, lazily skating back towards his own zone, well behind the play, as the Wings were driving toward DeSmith. Fortunately for the Penguins and Simon, Detroit committed one of there many (20) giveaways, throwing the puck backwards just inside the blue, in the hopes of hitting a trailing player. The puck eluded all Red Wing and Penguin players, all players that is except the Penguins’ Pylon.
Even with all that open space, Simon did his level best to avoid the score sheet. He was unable to get any elevation on the puck and shot it into Greiss’s leg pads. It trickled past the Wings Goalie and into the net.
5th Goal
Veleno grabbed the lead back for the Wings with a heavy shot from the top of the Face-Off Circle. Bjorkqvist did have good position on Seider who fed the puck to his partner Lindstrom at Center Point. However, the Pens left side was open. Brian Boyle had been late getting back because a wing defender had grabbed his stick (seems like they did that more than once) and the veteran let go rather than take a penalty. Angello covered the slot in the defensive zone but so did Boyle, who had come back in late. Therefore, Veleno was wide open and he drilled the puck over DeSmith’s blocker.
6th Goal
Tyler Bertuzzi iced the game for Detroit with an Empty Net Goal (ENG) shot from roughly his own blue line. Dominik Simon skated the puck into the attacking zone to just inside the blue line, before giving the puck away on weak backhand attempt to Boyle.
Odds and Sods
Angello led ou Penguins in hits with 5 for the second game in a row. His 5 hits were ¼ of the hits the team dished out.
Légaré finished the game with 3 Shots, 2 Hits, and 4 Penalty Minutes, including a brief roughing scrum with Detroit’s Moritz. He was a -1 for the evening as well, but that was more on account of the phantom Hooking call and his brief return to the ice just in time to get the minus.
Légaré also ended the night with a little more ice-time (TOI) than Samuel Poulin; 12:05 to 11:34 – interesting.
I am not a fan of smaller players but 5’-9” Valtteri Puustenin is growing on me. The young Finn’s GF/60 is 2nd highest on the team at 8.07 (granted in limited TOI). However, the kid has been saddled with the oxygen thief Simon, all but 42s of his TOI has been wasted with that millstone.
For all you CORSI fans, Simon was a 61.54% on his CORSI but was a 47.06% in his shot differential. He just doesn’t get it done. He gets lots of attempts from left field but nothing worth writing home about.
Brian Boyle was the big +/- loser at a -3
The loss drops the Penguins Preseason record to 3 – 2 with one of those Wins a SO win.
Only 1 preseason game left, tomorrow night, Saturday October 9, against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
I’m now officially rooting for Dominik Simon to make the squad just so I can read tOR’s 100% non biased play by play descriptions of his goals.
Hey Phil,
Since Simon has only averages 8 goals/82 games in his career you may get disappointed.
He doesn’t seem to find the back of the net with enough regularity to get any entertainment value.
AND
No, I don’t hide my lack of appreciation for Simon, but that doesn’t make my description of his goal inaccurate. Simon was dogging the defensive play and he shouldn’t be rewarded with praise for it. If that was opening night against Tampa the percentages are far higher that he would have earned a minus for his sloth rather than gifted a plus.
Hey Phil,
Great to hear from you and loved your comment … 🙂
Far be it from me to squirt gasoline on an incipient fire (hee hee), but Mike Sullivan had this to say about Simon following the game.
“…Dom was really good. Not only did he score a goal, but I thought he was stiff on the puck. He makes plays and wins puck battles, and he makes plays out of traffic.”
I eagerly await a fresh round of pyrotechnics from Other Rick in response … 🙂
Rick
Hey Rick,
Yep, you are a little angel. You never try to stir the pot.
As for Sullivan, let’s see, he has been bounced from the playoffs in the 1st round of the playoffs 3 years running. Well not really. He was swept by the islanders 3 years ago, knocked out by the 24th seed 2 yrs ago in the round before the 1st round (The -1 round aka the Qualifying round). He almost got swept there as well. He did do better last season, at least he didn’t get swept. The team he inherited off of Johnston won the Cup. The teams he has built have whimpered in the post-season.
Oh and Sully has never seen the value of a big man, ask Reeves, Gudbranson, Oleksiak, etc.
He pushed to trade Cole, Reeves, Gustavsson, and draft picks for Brassard and a couple bags of pucks.
Lat season he told JR to sign Rodrigues because Rodrigues was going to score lots of Gs for the Pens. He scored 7 in 35 games; Standardizing them to G/60 his numbers only ranked him as 11th on the team.
Sorry, Rick but if I were you, I wouldn’t bet on anything Sully says.
Yes Dom did score a G because, but that was only because he was being defensively lazy, crawling back to the defensive zone and even then he almost missed because he can’t shoot. He failed to lift the puck and shot it into Greiss’s pads.
“He makes plays and wins puck battles, and he makes plays out of traffic.” Like on the ENG? Detroit loved his play in traffic backhanding the puck straight to Carter Rowney who dumped the puck the other way, eventually finding its way onto Bertuzzi’s stick and into the Penguins net. How about the fact that although his Corsi was 61.54% he shot Diff was only 47.06%. When he was on the ice, the Pens had 16 shot attempts but only 8 made it on the net. Defensively, the team only ceded 10 shot attempts but 9 of them hit the net. Sounds to me like Simon was only playing the perimeter on either end of the ice. He didn’t take the puck into the dirty areas nor did he defend the dirty areas.
The Bottom line is Simon was a-1 for the game and he earned it.