Pregame
The Penguins get Sam Girard from injury and are about as healthy as they’re going to get this season with the only unavailable player of note being Blake Lizotte.
First period
The Penguins score on the second shift of the game on a sensational effort by Egor Chinakhov. Chinakhov takes a pass that Evgeni Malkin chips ahead for him, then cut into the middle of the ice through Dylan DeMelo. The lateral moves catches Connor Hellebuyck falling as he attempts to push back to his right. Chinakhov smokes a shot through the hole created. 1-0.
DeMelo’s nightmare start continues, he bobbles a puck that Bryan Rust quickly jumps on. Rust skates in low and feathers a little pass over Josh Morrisey’s stick. Rickard Rakell is driving to the front and able to lift it in. 2-0 just 2:02 into the game.
The frantic start continues, Chinakhov nearly scores again with a backhand shot but Hellebuyck gets a glove on it. Mark Schiefele hits the post. A bit later Parker Wotherspoon gets his shot blocked and the Jets are going the other way on an odd man rush. Arturs Silovs makes the first save but the rebound sits there. Morgan Barron comes barreling in, colliding with Erik Karlsson who slams into Silovs and the puck floats into the net.
The Penguins challenge for goalie interference. After review, the officials don’t agree. Goal stands, 2-1 game with 16:10 to go and Winnipeg goes to a power play. Pittsburgh kills off the penalty and then the game settles down.
Hellebuyck makes another nice save on Chinakhov and then keeps the puck out with Ben Kindel and the third line bearing down on him. Rakell gets to the net and another late chance that doesn’t go.
Wild and entertaining first period, shots are 13-8 Pittsburgh. The Jets are pretty fortunate the score is 2-1, it could easily be about a 3-0 or 4-0 score if the review went against them and Hellebuyck didn’t bail them out a few times.
Second period
The Penguins get a power play, which sounds good on the surface. Turned out to not be, the puck goes very high in the air and takes a weird bounce that gives Winnipeg a 2-on-1. Adam Lowry makes a great pass right through the skates of Erik Karlsson and Cole Koepke cuts against the grain to give Silovs no chance on that. 2-2 tie game.
Winnipeg starts to tip the ice and extending shifts, often against the Letang and Clifton pairs getting trapped on the ice. Just when it looks like the Jets are hogging all the pressure, the Penguins make a series of beautiful passes across the ice. A Jet defender ends up bumping into Hellebuyck, which takes his squareness to the shot away that Erik Karlsson sends into the net from all the way along the right wall. 3-2 Pens back in front.
Shots on goal are eight a piece in the second period. Both teams score once so the Pens cling to a one-goal lead after 40 minutes.
Third period
Winnipeg ties the game up, a long shot by Neal Pionk makes it through traffic and goes off the post and in. 3-3 game.
34 seconds later, the Jets appear to take their first lead of the game. Tommy Novak loses a puck behind his net, Silovs leaves a rebound that pops out for Scheifele. He’s got plenty of time and space to pick the top corner.
The Pens take a timeout to look the play over, Alex Iafallo raised his stick and touched the puck for what should have been a stoppage. Muse challenges a second time for the game and wins this one. Score stays at 3-3.
There’s no changing the next Winnipeg goal, Brad Lambert shoots from distance, it glances off Girard and changes direction enough to fool Silovs. 4-3 WIN after all.
Pittsburgh needs something good to happen and some of their best make it happen. Sidney Crosby makes a nice pass out for Bryan Rust. Rust drops it for Karlsson who glides in, picks a corner and fires in his 11th goal of the season. 4-4.
There’s no more scoring in regulation.
Overtime
Malkin and Kindel start the 3v3 and nearly score going forward on the faceoff. Kyle Conner gets a chance that Silovs stops then it’s all Pens going the other way. Kindel and Malkin have a 2-on-0 that Kindel again can’t finish. Later Crosby is behind the defense and gets slashed, generating a 4v3 power play with 3:20 to play.
The Pens work their power play, Dylan Samberg gets hit in the face and play stops with 43 seconds left in the power play. Crosby gets a redirect of a Karlsson shot/pass but that’s as close as they get.
Shootout
Chinakhov is the first shooter, he tries to shoot from long-range to the five-hole, Hellebuyck denies it.
Jonathan Toews goes first for Winnipeg. Silovs gets a little piece and the puck goes off the cross-bar and out.
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Crosby takes the puck, he wires a puck to the glove side to score.
Gustav Nyquist tests Silovs’ five-hole, stopped.
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Rakell gets a chance to win it — and he does! Snaps a low shot by Hellebuyck.
Some thoughts
- Hellebuyck gave up two goals on the first three shots, then made a beautiful save on Chinakhov to keep the game at 2-0. Huge moment there, big swing. It wasn’t a great beginning for Hellebuyck but he came up huge to prevent it from spiraling out of control.
- On the other side, tough game for Silovs. His rebound control wasn’t good and even sometimes he struggles to freeze pucks and get a stoppage to help the defense. The third period goals included some bad luck; traffic in front and a shot off the inside of the post then a defender changing the trajectory of the shot but overall it wasn’t a clean or good game for the Pens’ goalie.
- Dan Muse falls to 0-8 on goalie interference challenges this season, some of them in these recaps we have scorched him for as being low percentage ideas. This one was worth it, since the contact with the goalie seemed to be caused by the opposing player. Didn’t go the Pens way but in the subjective world of goal reviews that could have been one seen differently on a different day.
- On second thought, that probably deserves more of a reaction than ‘oh tough break to not get the call’, when the whole contact was initiated by the attacking player. The league has set a high bar to reverse calls (most of the time) but this one will be right up there with the handful of examples where what you see wasn’t reflected in the final decision, which is truly maddening.
- Ryan Shea left the game in the second period after absorbing a big hit from the 6’5” Lowry that ended up appearing to smack Shea up high. He’d miss the final 8+ minutes of the second and did return to the bench for the start of the third period with a full face shield but then went back down to the room and didn’t play again.
- The first 6:51 of this game featured three total goals, a post being struck, a great save and a questionable goal review. Felt like a whole game went down in just a few minutes.
- DeMelo played two shifts and had a big hand in how the Penguins scored two goals and then didn’t take another shift the rest of the period. Tough stuff there, the Jets went to a five defenseman rotation out of necessity due to his shoddy level of play before working him back in.
- Letang struggles continue, one indicator is an average shift time in the first two periods of 1:04. This is not by design and his icetime isn’t a result of coaching choices but rather getting caught on the ice too often for too long. Karlsson’s average shift times in the first two: 51 and 52 seconds. Almost every time the Pens get trapped in their own end for a prolonged time or have multiple failures to clear the zone, Letang has a hand in it more often than not. Letang’s 5v5 xGF% of 27% was sadly up from the effort in the teens the last game against Carolina, even putting a better puck mover in Girard hasn’t stablized No. 58’s play yet.
- Malkin did well on the first assist, and even liked his puck touches in OT but my word he also had a frustrating game with his decision making and plays coming off his stick today. Was nice to see him engaged and backchecking hard was not as fun watching
- Squandering the overtime power play only to see the game go to a shootout has been a story that’s unfolded in the past, and not in a good way. Luckily the Pens got some stops and scored some goals in the shootout. Amazing.
Playing the 12th place team in the West, at home, this one had to be a win for Pittsburgh with a tough matchup against Carolina tomorrow. The start was good but a lot of the last part of the game wasn’t. This Pens team always finds a way to hang around and keep fighting, with Karlsson still doing a lot of the heavy lifting. One more down.
