Penguins Rally to Beat Capitals in OT

Since my duties at Wright’s Gym kept me otherwise engaged, I didn’t get to watch a whole lot of last night’s Penguins-Capitals game. In fact, my back was turned to the big screen TV behind the front desk on our first two goals. I didn’t get to view Jake Guentzel’s incredible deflection tally until I watched it on NHL.com.

Still, I witnessed enough of our 3-2 overtime triumph over the Caps at the appropriately named Capital One Arena last night to share a few impressions.

Despite our recent 5-1 run…very encouraging by the way…we’re far from a perfect team. The fourth line is practically non-existent and the second line is still struggling to mesh (a combined minus-six last night).

Worse yet, most of those second-unit troubles seem to be attributable to Evgeni Malkin, minus-five over his past four games despite the fact that he’s been on a little bit of a roll with three goals and eight points in his last nine.

Now it appears the team may be without one of its more vocal and popular players, Jason Zucker, for a spell.

Yet as I glimpsed the Pens pushing the game to overtime before snatching the two points thanks to a pretty bit of teamwork by Teddy Blueger and Kasperi Kapanen, a word popped into my head.

Character.

Our Pens have been down more times this season than you can shake a stick at (no pun intended). Yet they keep battling back. And they keep finding ways to prevail.

I confess, when I watched former GM Jim Rutherford sack his assistant coaches last fall and add players in what seemed to be willy-nilly fashion, the last thing I expected was to see this group bond as a team. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening. They appear to have a marvelous esprit de corps, along with that dogged never-say-die attitude.

There’s a long way to go yet…39 games to be exact…and so many things can go wrong to kibosh things between now and the end of the season. Injuries, unexpected slumps from key players to name a couple. Not to mention that six of those games are with first-place Boston and half-dozen more against Philly, teams we don’t match up so well with.

But at the very least, we’re beginning to resemble a playoff team.

Puckpourri

The Pens outshot the Caps, 37-22, and won 56 percent of the faceoffs, with Blueger (75 percent) and Sidney Crosby (68 percent) leading the way.

Tristan Jarry stopped 20 shots (.909 save percentage) to earn the second star. Following a rocky start to the season, he’s won four of his last five outings while posting a 2.20 goals against average and sparking .932 save percentage.

Malkin, Guentzel and Kapanen were the goal-getters for the Pens. Freshly motivated following his previous game benching and a talk with coach Mike Sullivan, Kapanen responded with a strong performance, collecting a goal and an assist. He was named star of the game.

Special teams…atrocious earlier in the season…have improved dramatically during the recent hot streak. Over the past five games, the Pens have killed 12 of 14 penalties (85 percent) while converting on three of 12 power plays (25 percent).

We’re presently tied with the Islanders for third place in the MassMutual East Division with a record of 10-6-1 and 21 points, two points ahead of the fifth-place Flyers. We have a game in hand on the Isles…Philly has two in hand on us.

Rookie Pierre-Olivier Joseph continues to tumble back to earth. He’s a minus-six in his past five games, which pretty much coincides with being paired with Kris Letang. Could there be a connection? After all, “Tanger’s” not the easiest guy to read.

Opinyinz

Our speed has really been telling against the heavier-footed Caps (4-1) and Isles (3-1). However, I still wish we had some functional size and grind to go with the wheels. There are times when we struggle to win puck battles.

Following an excellent stretch, Mike Matheson had a bit of a rough game (minus-one). The Caps’ heavy forechecking pressure seemed to rattle him, especially deep in his own end.

On the flip side, I thought Cody Ceci played a really good game. He’s a better skater than advertised and is very smart when it comes to jumping into the play. I think his overall decision-making’s been good, too. In my book, his quietly steady play has been one of the most pleasant surprises thus far.

Belated kudos to Rutherford for having the cojones to sign the former first-round pick despite the mostly negative scouting reports and metrics. A shout-out as well to Sullivan and the coaching staff for using Cody in situations that give him the greatest chance to succeed.

Speaking of pleasant surprises, how about Blueger? With three goals and 11 points in 17 games, a 53.3 success rate on faceoffs and a Corsi of 54 to with a plus-six, he’s blossomed into a legit third-line center right before our eyes.

A rare Pens second-round pick who’s panned out.