Penguins Attack Sharks then Escape

For a brief 20 minute plus span I was happy. Papa Smurf – Mike Sullivan was going to have to play Kasperi Björkqvist, Sam Lafferty, and Radim Zohorna. Björkqvist and Lafferty were paired on the most effective line the Penguins had a couple of preseasons ago (with Nathan Légaré). But Papa Smurf don’t like size or kids, so he broke them up and sent them away.

However, two of them were back together again yesterday and the team played a solid 20 minutes. I thought I was going to have to eat crow, everything was looking good. I almost thought, momentarily, that our Pittsburgh Penguins New Year’s resolution was going to be to play a complete game – no such luck.

Yesterday’s game against the San Jose Sharks reminded me a bit of the movie “Jaws”. Our boys jumped out on the ice frolicking and playing carefree. San Jose’s Goalie was playing the part of a fisherman pulling all of our pucks out of his net. Our hometown boys jumped out to a 6 – 1 lead after 20 minutes of total domination. Bryan Rust and Evan Rodrigues potted 4 of the 6 Goals (G) – 2 apiece, while Jake Guentzel continue his torrid pace adding 1 G and Björkqvist poached his first. The Black and Gold dominated total Shot Attempts (SA) 33 – 15, Shots on Goal (SOG) 17 – 10, and High Danger Chances (HDC) 10 – 3, in 5 on 5 situations. The only blemish in the first period was an Alexander Barabanov G.

Rodrigues’ opened the scoring, taking a breakout feed from Marcus Pettersson, cruising through the Neutral Zone (NZ) into a brief 2 on 1 with Dominik Simon. When a Shark back-checker appeared on the horizon, Radim Semik bit on a bit of fancy stick work by E-Rod and ended up on the wrong side of the puck, giving the Penguins Center an inside lane between the circles. E-Rod took the gift and cut inside before lifting a lazy wrist shot over James Reimer’s blocker. (Thanks, Semik and Reimer, we will take that)

Danton Heinen got the secondary assist on the G when he tapped the puck back to Pettersson for the breakout.

Guentzel extended the lead to 2 – 0. Pettersson started the breakout leading the puck up to Rust. Rust then found Sidney Crosby in flight on the Penguins Right Wing (RW) near the Shark’s blue-line. Crosby danced laterally at the blue-line back to the inside, with Rusty flying up ice to join the play. The Pens captain made a cute but risky between the legs drop pass at the blue-line to back to Rust who was coming with a lot of speed. Flying down the RW, Rust took a quick peep toward the front of the net and saw Pettersson cutting in. He whipped a hard pass through the crease, but it was to hard for Pettersson to tap in but not so hot that his line mate Guentzel couldn’t handle. Jake ripped into the net.

Next up, Rodrigues notched his second G of the game with 4 of the 5 Penguins on the ice having touched the puck on the play. Rodrigues started the play off back-checking his own zone, first one on the puck, bouncing it off the corner boards to Mike Matheson, before the Sharks could get there. Matheson tapped up the wall a little farther to Simon. Simon pulled it off the boards to Heinen and Heinen lugged the puck up ice on his off wing. Rodrigues drove in with his Winger and threw a nice pick to give Heinen an inside lane. Heinen took the opportunity to cut inside drawing both Shark defenders toward him, leaving Rodrigues to sneak in behind. Heinen returned Rodrigues’ favor by slipping the puck back to his Center who walked in all alone from the RW face-off dot all alone; 3 – 0, the good guys.

Rust made it 4 – 0 on a bit of puck luck. Several of Rust’s teammates played catch around the perimeter before Kris Letang opted to take a right point shot that deflected off a Shark defender right onto the returning RW’s stick in the slot. Skating down the slot, between the circles Rust beat Reimer again over the besieged Goalies blocker. Brian Dumoulin got the secondary helper on that G.

Like Mr. Jaws, Barabanov then sneaked into idyllic setting and started to feed. Helped by some great eye-to-hand coordination. The Sharks forward batted Timo Meier pass into the slot out of the air and then tapped the still juggling puck behind a shocked Casey DeSmith. No one would believe a Shark attack was eminent. Even though the thought tugged at the back of my mind, even I wasn’t really looking for it.

Björkqvist didn’t give us time to consider the thought anyway. Less than a minute later he teamed up with his line mates to make it 5 – 1. A loose puck rolled into the Left Wing (LW) corner and up the boards where Chad Rhuwhedle reversed it back into the corner for Lafferty who pushed it along behind the net to Zohorna. Coming out if the RW corner, Zohorna found Björkqvist cruising through the crease and bang – bang, on a drive-by.

Rust notched his second G of the game to close out the first period. Pettersson blasted a left point shot wide of the net and the puck caromed all the way up the RW boards to John Marino. He found Rust center point and number 17 blasted the puck past Reimers blocker one more time. Penguins fans may have been convinced it was safe to skate on the waters again.

Then came the second period. San Jose Coach pulled starting Goalie Reimer and put in Terry Sawchuck, I mean Zach Sawchenko and things changed. The Sharks came a feeding. They started hitting our Penguins. When the dust finally settled at the end of the third period the Sharks ended up out hitting our Penguins 51 to 32.

After all the scoring of the first period and with a Goalie change for the Sharks the second period was a bit of a sleeper. The only G came after Simon decided to take a Hooking Penalty, at 12:31. It took san Jose nearly the full 2 minutes, but at 14:27, the bearded one, Brent Burns blasted a shot over Casey DeSmith’s glove. Former Penguin Nick Bonino and Noah Gregor got the assists (A).

Then the feeding frenzy began. Lulled into a sense of security of 6 – 2 lead our Penguins waddled into the 3^rd Period only to have Matt Nieto blast a puck off net and off the back boards, rebounding up pin-balling off a sliding on his knees DeSmith and into the back of the net. This had to be the jump scare of Matt Hooper when he finds the dismembered body parts while scuba diving in shark infested waters. It happened only 20 seconds into the final frame and the lead was cut in half.

Jacob Middleton added to the mounting Goals Against (GA) count, tipping a Erik Karlsson blast past DeSmith at 3:01. Barely a minute later, Rodrigues, Heinen and the human Pylon, Dominik Simon, left Logan Couture alone in front of the net, by himself, while they played midget hockey, all of them following the puck behind the net. After scoring 6 in the first, our Penguins were now being outscored 4 – 0 in the second 2 frames. If not for a struggling Sharks’ Goalie in the first period, our hometown heroes would have been Chum.

My fears really started mounting at 7:11 of the 3^rd period when Simon seemed bent on snatching defeat out of victory when he got his stick into Karlsson for the second time. I wouldn’t have even mentioned the Penalty had Simon not whined about it. I was no Choir Boy when I played. I remember a time when, during a scrum around my net I chopped a player down using my Goalie stick like a lumberjack’s axe. When I got up from the pile and flipped the frozen puck to the Ref, he said, “I was going to call you for that nasty slash, but you cut your own guy down”. Sheepishly I returned, “All I could see was Skates”. He was guilty. He should have just skated off.

Fortunately, Couture took a Penalty almost immediately on the ensuing Shark Power Play (PP), helping the Penguins Penalty Kill (PK) numbers.

Then Rodrigues completed his hat trick on a Penguin PP. Letang and Rust played catch with a couple of quick little passes, mesmerizing the Shark defenders, then Letang fed Rodrigues and he slipped the puck past the previously unbeatable Sawchenko to ice the game.

Rust completed his Hat Trick with an Empty Net Goal (ENG). Crosby and Guentzel had the helpers.

Odds and Sods

Starting with the good. If this were a remake of the movie Jaws, Rust had to be playing the part of Sheriff Brody. He notched 3 G and 5 Points in his return.

I guess if Rust was Brody, then Jake Guentzel had to be Matt Hooper with 1G and 1A in his return to action.

The Björkqvist – Lafferty – Zohorna line was dominate in their limited ice time. Their 5-on-5 CORSI was 87.50%.

Over ¼ of the Penguins hits came from Zach Aston-Reese (9). If not for him the rest of the Smurfs would have rolled over and played dead.

Now the bad, even though E-Rod had 3 G, his +/- was only even.

The Aston-Reese – Drew O’Conner – Brock McGinn line had all its players finish in the negative.

Earning the roll of Captain Quint was DeSmith as he got chewed up and left for dead, giving up 5 G on 27 SOG.

Giving credit where credit is due, I really did do a double take when I saw the name Sawchenko on that players jersey. My eyes swear they saw Sawchuck and it appeared for the best part of 2 periods to be true. The new Shark’s Goal played like Sawchuck for most the game, rejecting 20 of 21 shots.