The Penguins and red-hot Lightning went toe-to-toe last night at PPG Paints Arena in a contest that featured the riveting intensity of a winner-take-all Game 7.
It was a great game to watch, with plenty of back-and-forth action. Stellar goaltending, too. In the end it came down to a shootout, where the Bolts predictably eclipsed our Pens, 2-1, to match the final score of the game.
Following two scoreless periods, the Lightning struck on an odd play at 14:13 of the third period. Pens goalie Arturs Silovs blunted a shot by Yanni Gourde off a 2-on-1 and appeared to have the puck smothered beneath his glove. Alas, the rubber somehow trickled loose, and Lightning defender J.J. Moser alertly poked it between Silovs’ pads and over the goal line.
You could certainly and successfully argue that the play should’ve been whistled dead, but such is our relationship with the referees these days. To borrow from comedian Rodney Dangerfield, “We don’t get no respect.”
Pens coach Dan Muse wasted little time in pulling Silovs for an extra attacker with 3:17 left in regulation.
About a minute later (at 17:44 to be exact) Kris Letang pinched along the right wall, picked old friend Jake Guentzel’s pocket and slipped a short pass to Evgeni Malkin. Geno Machino took two strides and ripped an absolute tracer bullet past Andrei Vasilevskiy’s blocker and in off the far post.
While the Bolts appeared to be playing for a shootout, the Pens dominated overtime to the tune of a 4-1 edge in shots (7-2 in shot attempts), but couldn’t solve Vasilevskiy. Which led to the aforementioned shootout.
And with Silovs in goal for the Pens…
…still, absolutely no complaints about our effort. And we did manage to snag a point.
Puckpourri
Bryan Rust (a game-high six shots on goal) returned following a two-game absence, giving Muse the option of returning to some tried-and-true line configurations. However, our rookie skipper experimented with his middle-six units, placing Tommy Novak with Geno and Egor Chinakhov and slotting Ben Kindel between big-‘n’-tallers Justin Brazeau and Anthony Mantha.
The former combo dominated, the latter languished.
In our first of what figures to be several games sans Erik Karlsson (lower-body injury), our reconfigured defense held up well.
The Letang-Brett Kulak duo saw the lion’s share of duty, each logging over 25 minutes of ice time. Jack St. Ivany (five hits) filled EK65’s spot next to Parker Wotherspoon. Ryan Shea and Connor Clifton formed the third pairing.
The latter employed his usual physical brand of hockey. Early in the third period he drilled Brandon Hagel into the sideboards with a crunching check before dropping the gloves with Anthony Cirelli. In the process, earning a rare double-major.
Silovs stopped 30 of 31 shots to earn third-star honors, but Dear Lord is he porous in shootouts, yielding tallies to Cage Concalves (whodat?) and silky-smooth-goalie-killer Nikita Kucherov.
Chinakhov netted the lone black-and-gold marker with a blur of a wrist shot. My word, can Egor fire the puck! Can’t help but be excited about this kid’s future.
Vasilevskiy earned top star honors. Rightfully so. Andrei moves so fluidly and economically for such a big man (6’4” 223), it’s a wonder anyone scores against him.
In the hot-or-not department, the Pens scored 29 goals during our six-game winning streak (an average of 4.83 per game). Only two in our three losses since.
Bolts rookie defenseman Charle-Edouard D’Astous (pronounced Dastoo) gets my vote for one of the all-time great hockey names.
Standings-wise, the Pens (21-14-10, 52 points) are tied with our next opponent, Philly, for fifth place in the Metro. Thursday night’s clash should be a barn-burner.
We’re one point out of an Eastern Conference wild-card spot.
I don’t know if I’ve ever flat-out stated this, but win, lose or draw, I really like our team. Especially the way they compete and battle and seem to play for each other. They’re a heck of a lot of fun to watch, too, a stark contrast from the past few seasons.
A final observation. Letang, who drives me nuts at times, has played really (really) well this past month or so.
