Pregame
Ville Koivunen picked up a day-to-day undisclosed lower body injury in last night’s game, Andrei Kuzmenko steps into his spot in the lineup. Arturs Silovs rotates in to get the start in goal.
The Anaheim Ducks are going with these lines.
The Ducks also brought some of the actors from the Mighty Ducks movies and woo, these Hometown Remix sure hit the ‘90s nostalgia sweet spot. There’s been some mixed reviews and spotty acceptance of some of the team’s choices, would have to imagine this concept is about as universally loved as it’ll get. That front crest is so much better than Anaheim’s typical webbed foot D looking thing and the color scheme of the green/yellow/purple is just iconic. Hard to believe after all these years this is the first movie-inspired jersey the NHL team has gone with.
First period
Great start for the Pens, including the Crosby line and then the Lizotte line getting plenty of pressure and time in the offensive zone. The good will goes out the door when Erik Karlsson steps up and Beckett Sennecke and the puck both get behind him for a breakaway, though Sennecke skies the shot to avoid issues.
Kaedan Korczak takes the first penalty of the night. Pittsburgh holds on until one second remains on it, Mikael Granlund is the first to a rebound kicked in his direction and the return effort hits the back of the net. 1-0 Anaheim.
Shortly after that, the Pens are back to the penalty box, it’s Crosby this time for a cross-check. No goal on it this time.
Pittsburgh gets their footing back under them, another good shift by the top line and after that Ben Kindel is tripped by Tristan Luneau to grant the first Pens power play. Not much comes of it.
Well, it was a good opening and closing five minutes for Pittsburgh, then the penalties came and their defensive structure got (pardon the pun) a little loosey goosey against the Ducks, giving up two 3-on-1 rushes that they were able to survive in the middle of the period.
Second period
Pittsburgh gets some power plays early, Rickard Rakell gets held and then just 23 seconds into the power play, Tommy Novak has his lip opened up by an Alex Killorn high stick, leading to 1:37 of a 5v3 advantage for the Pens.
Jackson LaCombe blocks away a sure goal with his skate, there’s a whistle with 41 seconds left in the 5v3 and Pittsburgh elects to use their timeout very early in the game in order to get their top players a breather and talk strategy.
It doesn’t pay off, they try to move the puck and find Kindel, his shot misses the net. From there the team bumbles around, finding ways to lose the puck and getting no where.
Pittsburgh gets called for a penalty, the Ducks strike again for their second PPG of the night. Cutter Gauthier makes a slick no look shot that fooled everyone in white thinking he would probably be passing. 2-0.
The bottom starts dropping out, Granlund finds Gauthier with a nice pass that again exposes the Pens’ defensive structure with only one player anywhere near the net. Gauthier scores his second goal of the night, right along the ice again. 3-0.
Repeated missed opportunities and repeated Gauthier goals put the Pens down 3-0 and it doesn’t even feel that close at the second intermission.
Third period
Blake Lizotte goes off for a tripping minor early in the period, the Ducks try to set Gauthier up for the hat trick, that doesn’t work. The second group comes out and Tristan Luneau shoots from the point with traffic and Silovs doesn’t catch up in time. 4-0 on the third PPG of the game for Anaheim.
The Pens get a power play with over 13 minutes to go and pull Silovs to make it a 6v4 advantage. Kris Letang joins the top power play and it pays off with Letang’s first goal of the season. 4-1 game.
Pittsburgh keeps pushing to get back in the game. Silovs is pulled again with 7:40 to go when the team gets an offensive zone faceoff. They force Anaheim into an interference penalty. Silovs stays on the bench for the team to try another 6v4 power play. It works again, this time with Crosby making a short pass over for Rickard Rakell to smack in. 4-2 game with 6:18 to play.
The push continues with the fight against the clock. The Pens pull Silovs for a third time with about three minutes to go and nearly score during a net-front scramble that again sees a Duck defender block a shot that was going into the net. The empty net luck finally runs out, Gauthier scores from long-range to get his hat trick and set the final score at 5-2.
Some thoughts
- Rutger McGroarty was called up for an extra body in lieu of the Koivunen injury but didn’t play. He did play Friday and Saturday in the AHL and then make the cross-country trek to join the NHL club, it can be annoying when young players are recalled and not dressed but this decision made some sense. (Of course, it’ll make less if/when McGroarty doesn’t play again on Wednesday if he’s still with the NHL club by then).
- Anaheim has the second ranked power play in the NHL, not a great idea to send them to the power play twice in the first ten minutes of action!
- The Pittsburgh PK rotation in play is interesting, and not really a good interesting. Karlsson ended up at the top of the box, where a forward would usually be. The next PK, it was Korczak who ended up in the same spot. This required forwards to be down low and have to defend near the net, which doesn’t seem like the most sound strategy. That it happened twice for a defenseman fine with rotating out far from the net within a few minutes stood out as noteworthy.
- Great Bob Grove stat (well not so great for Blake Lizotte): Lizotte has lost 11 straight defensive zone faceoffs while on the PK. That’s a big issue since Lizotte typically takes the first PK faceoff and those draws are in the d-zone. Overall, the non-Crosby faceoffs of the first period were two wins and nine losses, which was at five wins and 14 losses by the end of the second. Immediately losing puck possession so consistently has mounted into a major problem for this team. When Lizotte was in the box, Kindel took the duty of the first PK faceoff, he lost and broke his stick in the process – the puck ended up in the net seconds later.
- It’s very petty but it doesn’t stop me from doing a little smile when remembering Gauthier elected to not want to sign with the Flyers after they drafted him. Maybe a little less happy when he starts snapping goals in left and right, but better it happens 2x a season instead of four.
- Tonight had shades of the Vegas game for last week when Pittsburgh got a long 5v3 power play in a perfect spot to change the game (though down 1-0 in the second period tonight is of course a little different than a tie game late in the third like back then) only to not score. Then watch the opponent get a power play and quickly score a back-breaking goal. Not exactly the type of deja vu that you want to go through.
- Just from the box score, a 2/5 night for the power play will look better than this one actually was, given the long 5v3 that went south at a key time of the game. It doesn’t help that aforementioned great Ducks power play was even better, going 3/4 and putting the game out of reach until a comeback effort that was too big of a hole and too little time for the Pens to have a real shot.
- Liked the idea for the coaches to call the timeout early on in the game and try to give the players another crack at it. Having Novak back in the room getting repairs on his lip didn’t help matters, but at this point there’s still three future Hall of Famers on the ice in that situation. They have to find a way to get it in the net.
- At least Letang got the power play something for the night with a goal. Nothing fancy, just a slapshot from the middle of the ice. Keeping it simple and putting pucks on target is the best thing they can do right now. Great stat from the SNP crew that tonight’s goal was only the second regular season goal for Letang in calendar 2026 (and the last was way back on January 1st!). Letang did score two goals in the playoffs.
- Malkin had two power play assists tonight. He did get a PPA last night vs LA which was his first of the season in that ledger and his first power play point since way back on the second game against Montreal on 10/3. He’s had some injury issues, nice to see three PPA this weekend after being dry all year to that point.
- A sixty minute game can’t be boiled down as simply as two plays, but it’s hard to avoid the final pre-empty net score of 4-2 and the fact two Ducks defenders blocked shots going into empty nets. It’s almost impossible to imagine Penguin players doing the same, most of them tend to end up out of picture view to the net when the goals go in. That, of course, wasn’t the true difference in why one team won and the other lost, though it does stand out just the same.
Not a new feeling, the Penguins are just missing that little extra bit right now that it takes to win games. Usually that comes from the power play failing gloriously and the defense getting out of sorts leading to goal(s) against. Both of those elements have been on display regularly this season and certainly were a big part of the story tonight. In theory, they’re pretty close, yet they fail to get there so regularly that it is a very real gap between winning and what they’re typically capable of. One more on the road on Wednesday night in San Jose before returning home.
