Blake Lizotte hits the IR, so Danton Heinen is back in Pittsburgh to fill in. Connor Clifton is back in the game lineup and Arturs Silovs gets his first start since November 29th.<\/p>\n
The visiting, but still very loudly orange Anaheim Ducks have this lineup for the night:<\/p>\n
The two teams have no problems trading end-to-end rushes and lots of shots and chances early. The first goal, however, comes on a bit of a broken play- Heinen got kicked out of the face off circle and Noel Acciari moved in as a replacement. The faceoff was a 50\/50 play that Connor Dewar was able to direct back to Acciari with his skate. Acciari used the bounce to quickly fling a shot in goal, and it sailed right on by Ville Husso, thanks to the screen from Dewar and the Duck defending him. 1-0 Pens.<\/p>\n
Justin Brazeau is tripped, the Pens get the game\u2019s first power play but can\u2019t capitalize on it. Soon after that penalty ends, Dewar is cross-checked to give the Pens another chance, again they don\u2019t do much with it in terms of generating chances.<\/p>\n
End of the first, 16-8 are the shots in favor of Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh can\u2019t score on the carryover power play and get a few other very close calls, can\u2019t get the puck over the line again. Anaheim uses that to tie the game up. The Ducks win an offensive zone faceoff and defenseman Jackson Lacombe skates right by Bryan Rust. With almost no angle left, Lacombe lifts a shot way high that banks in off Silovs and into the net. 1-1 game.<\/p>\n
The Pens get a third power play, again no good. Ville Koivunen somehow avoids a hooking penalty despite going water skiing on a backcheck. Instead the refs call Heinen for a minor a bit later to give Anaheim a second crack at their power play. Pittsburgh kills that off but the Ducks are still able to find the next goal. Rust, Crosby and Karlsson all have opportunities to clear the puck, none can and before you know it Troy Terry has the puck on his stick and he quickly goes top shelf on Silovs. 2-1 ANA.<\/p>\n
Tommy Novak becomes a focal point late in the period, nearly scoring on a shot\/pass with Crosby at the backdoor and the puck hitting Husso\u2019s pads and somehow not trickling in. Novak creates better luck when he shoots from in tight, collects his rebound and even though his momentum took him behind the net Novak was able to quickly sling the puck off the back of Husso and in. 2-2 to go into intermission.<\/p>\n
Shots are 29-18 PIT overall in the game, but the score is tied up 2-2.<\/p>\n
Some tied third periods teams are virtually watching the clock to get to overtime. This was not one of those games. Both teams were fine with trading odd man rushes and skating the puck as quickly as they could to generate offense.<\/p>\n
Towards the end of the period it was the Pens\u2019 third line of young players that again amped up the pressure in a major way. A collision between Kris Letang and Radko Gudas left Gudas smarting and at times doubled over in pain. The Duck defenders were tiring and Husso had a to grab a stick to help his cause. The refs actually call the penalty on the goalie, late in the third period. Surprising, but warranted. Wouldn\u2019t you know, the Pens power play comes through. It\u2019s a very fortunate play, Anthony Mantha is centering the puck when Husso leans his stick out to try and break it up. Husso fails in a major way, turns out being bad luck for him to redirect the puck into his own net. 3-2 with just 3:55 to play.<\/p>\n
Anaheim pulls their goalie, the Pens nearly score but can\u2019t quite do it. Chris Kreider goes to the box for Anaheim with 17 seconds left and it seems like that should be about it for their chances. Turns out, it\u2019s not. With time running down rookie Bennett Sennecke drives to the net. He swings in a desperation effort with one hand on his stick; more a centering pass than a shot. But the pucks hits off Karlsson\u2019s glove and goes into the net with 0.1 seconds left. Unreal.<\/p>\n
Shocking goal to give up there with a game that should have been in the bag.<\/p>\n
The Pens can\u2019t score on the carryover power play, action goes back to 3v3. Kindel almost sets Letang up for a winner, Karlsson and Crosby make some magic but for some reason Connor Dewar is the third player out there with them at the time. Dewar has a wide open net but can only hit the post.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh uses their timeout to give the top players a breather. They come close, no cigar.<\/p>\n
Novak is the first up, his shot to the glove side is stopped by Husso.<\/p>\n
Leo Carlsson is up for Anaheim, a deke to the backhand works perfectly.<\/p>\n
Crosby goes for the Pens, shoots it right into the glove.<\/p>\n
Troy Terry takes his turn, shoots wide. Didn\u2019t have much to shoot at.<\/p>\n
Ville Koivunen comes in with speed, maybe a little too much as he runs out of space and barely gets a shot away. Doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
Ducks win in the shootout<\/p>\n
The SNP broadcast mentioned this was the seventh straight game (highest active streak in league) for the Penguins to score a goal in the first period. Obvious but no less true that makes foe a great way to setup the rest of the game.Then again, with the Pens losing a lead in the third period for a third straight game, playing while ahead has proved to be a difficult proposition for them. Giving up the tying goal while on the power play with 0.1 seconds is a new low, even for them. It\u2019s shuddering to think what new ways they\u2019ll find to blow leads from here on out if this isn\u2019t rock bottom in that category I don\u2019t know what could be.The Ducks are fun, but oh brother they don\u2019t know how to defend a lick. Not sure how long they\u2019re going to last near the top of the standings but they will be a great watch this season due to the wide-open style of play and all the quality young players that are figuring it out at the NHL level.McGroarty\u2019s getting close to a goal, love the way he\u2019s grinding and his puck touches lately down by the net. You can tell it\u2019s coming for him, three shots on goal in the first 8:34 of the game alone.The whole line with McGroarty, Ville Koivunen and Ben Kindel has been aces. The Pens may have found something there, certainly for the foreseeable future. Nice players and complimentary skills blending together between that trio. Lots of players had great nights on the ol\u2019 Corsi and expected goals outlook for the Pens given the way it played out, none better than those three who were at 27-11 in shot attempts and up 1.9 – 0.3 in expected goals while on the ice. Sadly, played it even in actuals.1 for 5 power play on the night that salvaged their efforts with the late (and somewhat fluky, if not fortunate) goal that they gave back in the game\u2019s dying seconds. Gross night overall by the power play. It was o fer 5 since Evgeni Malkin has been hurt before that point. Replacing him and the whole unit strategy about who gets positioned where is all out of whack right now. By the second period power play it was Crosby out by the blueline passing harmlessly with Erik Karlsson and that\u2019s not going to be the recipe for success. Team needs some work there to reconfigure things there.The ice looked awful, puck was bouncing around and rolling a ton for both teams. Got worse as the night wore on. Ironically though the ice had nothing to do with the crazy bounces off goalies and defenders that caused goals late in the game.Don\u2019t look now but that\u2019s points in four straight games (and three goals in that stretch) for Novak. Nice for him to heat up, he\u2019s up to five goals on the season. He\u2019s streaky like that, now the only question will be how much hay can he make while the sun is shining? Nice to see a top-six winger step up and produce.Silovs hasn\u2019t won a game since November 6th and he narrowly found a way to avoid breaking that streak. Moneypuck had expected goals at 7.03 – 1.88 in the Pens\u2019 favor. Silovs gave up three and for being a big goalie he has a way to shrink away in the key moments (like the first and third goals of the game). At least by stopping 1 of 2 shootout efforts he somehow improved his stats in that metric.Well, at least the Pens tried new players for the shootout, but their over-arching problem of not having enough quality performers continues. They don\u2019t have anyone who can reliably make the deke that Leo Carlsson did at the pace he did and then place a backhand shot to the top like that. Giving Novak a chance was a good move since he was a hot player and curling and dragging the puck all over, can\u2019t knock using Koivunen either. The simple explanation, though frustrating, is that the Penguins are simply bound to lose more shootouts than they win until they acquire enough players who are good at that specific and toolsy skill. They don\u2019t have it right now.Of course, a night like this shouldn\u2019t have required a shootout in the first place. The Pens poured chances on Husso, but he stood tall. That\u2019s pretty annoying considering he\u2019s been waived and has played more AHL games than NHL games this season and isn\u2019t particularly good, yet Pittsburgh made him look like a brick wall that stopped 45 out of 48 shots and was only beaten on a deception play (Acciari), a weird goal from behind the net (Novak) and a tough bounce (Mantha).Would have been nice to comeback with about 1:30 left on the 4v3 OT power play and seal the game up. Mantha had just scored a goal a few game minutes earlier so it\u2019s tough to keep him off the ice in that situation but he looked like a fish out of water in that scenario. Easy to Monday Morning Quarterback it, but they needed someone for net-front to let Karlsson and Crosby create off the space opened up by that instead of Mantha hanging out by the blueline. Alas.<\/p>\n
Frustrating outcome, the Pens probably deserved a better result \u2014 but then again they got a little sloppy and were forced to pay for it too. They\u2019ll need to shrug it off and get ready for the next one on Thursday against Montreal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blake Lizotte hits the IR, so Danton Heinen is back in Pittsburgh to fill in. Connor Clifton is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,115414,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-338612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-game-recaps","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}