WOW!<\/p>\n
What else can you say about the Pittsburgh Penguins at this point? A whirlwind of a week that included four games in seven calendar days spread across three time zones culminated with another heart-stopping, come-from-behind effort on Saturday night in Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe points are so important right now,\u201d Head Coach Dan Muse said. \u201cYou come off a game that you don’t like, you always want to bounce back. It shows a lot with the group, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noel Acciari put the exclamation point on the evening, scoring the winning goal less than four minutes after Utah had tied the score at 3-3. Acciari\u2019s tally not only secured a 4-3 victory, but it summed up the heart, grit, and determination that his line, in particular, and the entire team, have displayed all season.<\/p>\n
Acciari\u2019s goal came when he outmuscled Utah defender Nate Schmidt to find a Parker Wotherspoon rebound. As Nick Schmaltz was also bearing down on his back, Acciari coolly slid the puck along the ice over the goal line.<\/p>\n
Not only did the\u00a0Acciari goal hold up as the winner, but it came 48 hours after his unit endured a rare off night. Combined with their shutdown work defensively down the stretch, those three were critical components of this much-needed win.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been awesome for us,\u201d Muse said about his fourth line. \u201cI\u2019m surprised that it took this long (for them to have an off night). \u2026 They\u2019ve just stuck to their identity for so long. Last game, they weren\u2019t happy with it. They had an off night. They responded, they played a huge role.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WOW! What else can you say about the Pittsburgh Penguins at this point? A whirlwind of a week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-541791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541791","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=541791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}