I don’t claim to prescient. And I’m sure as heck not right all the time. But I saw this one coming.
All of my pre-series concerns pretty much came to pass during our 3-2 loss to the Flyers in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference Quarterfinal set Saturday night.
Chief among them, the Flyers would be more ready to engage in playoff-style hockey. Something they’ve pretty much been practicing for the past six weeks and change during their charge from the depths of the Metro.
Like celluloid native son Rocky Balboa, the Flyers came right at us from the opening bell. Per Rick Tocchet’s plan, the orange-and-black hit us hard and often, which seemed to fluster our guys a bit. Their buttoned-down style made it difficult for us to muster any sustained pressure while inducing more turnovers than a bakery, forcing goalie Stuart Skinner to stare down myriad odd-man rushes and breakaways.
We just never really got to our game while Philly executed theirs to perfection.
As Erik Karlsson offered in a postgame interview, “They just played better than us from start to finish.”
After softening us up through the first period, the Flyers got the jump on a surprise wrister by Jamie Drysdale from the right dot at 9:19 of the second period.
The Pens pushed back minutes later, thanks in no small part to an inspirational shift by Sidney Crosby. In a remarkable display of what makes him so unique, our 38-year-old captain almost single-handedly kept the puck alive in the Flyers’ zone with a combination of hard cycling and grinding in the dirty areas.
With our foes back on their heels, Evgeni Malkin bolted off the bench and finished what Sid started with a laser from the right circle.
To my eye, the goal had to be a bit deflating to the Flyers, who’d dominated up to that point without a lead to show for it. I was further heartened when the Pens finally began to tilt the ice their way over the opening 10 minutes of the third period.
Then the Red Sea parted. Travis Sanheim shrugged off the stick checking of forwards Elmer Söderblom and Anthony Mantha to exploit a giant hole in the Pens’ d-zone coverage. He then cruised unimpeded into the slot and beat Skinner glove side.
Try as they might, the Pens just couldn’t seem to apply any sustained pressure on Flyers’ netminder Dan Vladar. It was getting down to rug-cuttin’ time at 17:23 when Philly rookie Porter Martone charged into our zone before jamming on the brakes to shed a back-checking Noel Acciari. After turning back toward open space, the 19-year-old phenom wheeled in the right circle and beat Skinner with an absolute bullet high glove side.
Three-one, bad guys.
Despite the bleak circumstances, the Pens battled on with Skinner pulled. With a tick over a minute to go, Bryan Rust pounced on a blocked shot in the slot and wired the puck past Vladar.
The Pens had one final chance in the closing seconds. Mantha cut through the low slot with his patented power move and attempted to backhand the biscuit through Vladar’s five-hole, but the rangy netminder kept the wickets closed.
Game 1 to Philly.
Puckpourri
Shot attempts were dead even at 46-apiece according to Natural Stat Trick, as were scoring chances at 19-apiece. The Flyers had a 20-17 edge in shots on goal and a 9-8 advantage in high-danger chances.
The Pens shoved back sufficiently to gain a 41-40 edge in hits, but it really isn’t their game. Sean Couturier paced Philly with a game-high seven hits, Connor Dewar topped the Pens with six. He seemed to play with a burr under his saddle after getting the worst of a second-period collision with Owen Tippett.
Puck management was an issue. We committed 15 giveaways.
Geno paced the Pens’ attack with a goal and a helper to earn third-star honors. The first two stars went to Sanheim and Martone. The former engaged Sid in a spirited bit of whacking and hacking in the closing minutes. Each received a penalty.
Christian Dvorak had an early would-be goal erased for launching himself into Skinner.
Speaking of, Big Stu turned aside a ton of Grade-A chances early. Overall, I thought he was effective. The two third-period goals hurt, no doubt, but the only tally I’d like to have back was Drysdale’s. On that one, the big netminder awkwardly lifted his right pad just as the puck arrived, almost like a toll gate being raised.
On the flip side, I wasn’t especially awed by Vladar, who was well-insulated by his teammates. Geno’s goal came as the result of a juicy rebound. I think the rangy Czechian can be had, provided the Pens generate more sustained pressure in the coming games.
Our bottom-six languished a bit. The third line of Ben Kindel centering for Söderblom and Mantha had an expected goals for percentage of 8.29. Our fourth line featuring Acciari, Dewar and Blake Lizotte had an xGF% of 15.93. All six players finished a minus-1.
The Pens and Flyers return to action for Game 2 on Monday night at PPG Paints Arena. Needless to say, pretty much a must win for our guys.
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Rick,
I first want to say that there is a lot I like about this Penguins’ team; most of them deserve a deep, deep playoff run. There is only one really weak spot on this team and that is Goaltending. I wish your assessment of Big Stu was accurate. If it was, if Big Stu was effective, your game recap would have been a whole lot more positive; we could have been celebrating a victory rather than looking for reasons why our Pens’ gave away home ice last night.
This was playoff hockey. Not only did the Flyers’ skaters knuckle down and play defense, so did our Pens. The final shot totals were Philadelphia 20, Pittsburgh 17, 37 total shots for the game. There was only a 3 shot difference between the 2 teams. Both teams’ Goalies were well insulated, neither was overly challenged.
Unfortunately for us, the bad guy’s Goalie may not have been great, but he did play better than ours. He turned away 15 of the 17 shots he faced. Our Goalie did turn away 1 more shot than Vladar; the problem was that he faced a whole 3 more shots than Stu, ceding 1 more Goal on only 3 more shots.
In fact, the final score could easily have been worse. Our Pens could have lost 4 – 2. You mentioned the Goal that was waved off. Many times, in the past, even recent past, that Goal stands. Our own former hero Patric Hornqvist scored a Goal crashing the net like Dvorak. Part of the rule states that contact with the Goalie has to be intentional. When you look at the replay of that Goal, Dvorak charges the net but tries to turn his skates to avoid contact but loses an edge.
Finally, one of my chief complaints you have heard me espouse has been how bad both Skinner and Silovs glove hands are. Several years back the “I hate Murray” gang used to complain how slow Matt Murray’s glove was (it really wasn’t truly slow, he was just lazy and played with it resting on his leg pad, needing to travel far more to get back up for those high shots). Both of the Goalies on the Penguins parent club actually have slower glove hands, even when their gloves start in the right/middle position.
All this week, I have said that all Tocchet has to do is get his players to shoot high glove side and they will score plenty of Goals. He also can get tons of Goals by getting low shots into our Goalies pads and crash the net for rebounds (bounce passes off the pads).
A couple of more thoughts, how much of the very low shot totals were from the effectiveness of the opponent’s defense and how much of it was from a more determined defense first strategy to insulate bad Goalies? Second on a more positive note, winning game one is a good thing, but statistically, the team that wins game 2 and more importantly game 3 has a greater probability of winning the series than the winner of game 1.
Hey Other Rick,
Excellent thoughts, my friend, although once again I disagree to an extent about Skinner.
On the second goal by Sanheim, Stu went into a deep crouch to try and see around Martone, who was blocking his vision. Unfortunately, he was moving to his right, and Sanheim’s shot went to his left.
On the Martone goal? To me that was just wicked snipe, top-shelf with pace.
The Pens may have limited the Flyers’ shots, but they yielded a ton of Grade-A chances. Lots of turnovers trying to navigate the neutral zone and at the opposing blue line.
As an aside, on the first two Flyers goals, Sam Girard was defending the net front. He wasn’t able to move either Denver Barkey or Martone from Skinner’s line of sight. Water under the bridge, I know, but I would rather have had Brett Kulak defending in those instances.
Given the overall state of our goaltending and team defense, it seems three goals is the cutoff. As in, if we score more than three, I think we win, and less than three we lose. Not really conducive to playoff hockey.
Rick
Hey Rick,
Stu did crouch down right after he was standing really tall, then he slowly moved down into a crouch and drifted across his crease, fairly deep in his net. Martone was in front of the crease but only momentarily screened Skinner, Letang was more of a screen. The bottom line on that Goal was Skinner's reactions were very slow and dull and his hockey sense was off; a left-handed shot like Sanheim is more likely to shoot back across the grain than shoot to Skinner's right, his follow through would pull the puck back to Skinner's left.
Sanheim did make a couple of brilliant moves to set himself up for the shot, Letang to help make things more difficult on Skinner, and Girard was absolutely useless in protecting his Goalie, but the shot was stoppable by a good Goalie.
Martone's shot was from over 30' away, glove side - exactly where anyone who wants to score on either Skinner or Silovs should be. It was a good shot after a great move to shake Acciari, but again it was not an unstoppable shot.
As for grade A chances, the Flyers only had 9 HDCA to the Penguins' 8 HDCA and not all of those CA turned into shots; the CORSI line for Philly was 46, 20 SA, 9 Blk, 18 Ms, Philadelphia missed the net 18 times, almost as many shots that were on Goal. If the Flyers had been able to get more of their chances on Goal the score could have been far worse.
Once again the team defense really played hard but the Goalies just didn't show up.