Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (12-7-5, 29 points, 5th place Metropolitan Division) @ Tampa Bay Lightning (16-8-2, 34 points, 1st place Atlantic Division)
How to Watch: Broadcast locally Sportsnet Pittsburgh and The Spot, streaming on ESPN+
Pens’ Path Ahead: The Pens play next in Dallas on Saturday (6pm eastern start) then return home to Pittsburgh for a five-game homestand from Dec 9 – 16, starting with games against Anaheim, Montreal and San Jose next week in an every-other-day rhythm that begins with Saturday’s game.
Opponent Track: Tampa lost 2-1 on the road to the Islanders on Tuesday night, ending a seven-game winning streak. The Lightning are among the hottest NHL teams over the past month, posting a 10-3-0 record since Nov 5.
Season Series: This is the first of three PIT/TB games this season, the teams will meet again on January 13th in Pittsburgh and then finish things off on April 2nd back in Tampa.
Hidden Stat: Tonight’s game features two stingy teams, Tampa is third in goals/game allowed (2.58), the Pens are ninth (2.72).
Getting to know the Lightning
Brnadon Hagel – Anthony Cirelli – Nikita Kucherov
Jake Guentzel – Nicholas Paul – Oliver Bjorkstrand
Zemgus Girgensons – Yanni Gourde – Pontus Holmberg
Curtis Douglas – Dominic James – Gage Goncalves
JJ Moser / Darren Raddysh
Charle-Edouard D’Astous / Emil Lilleberg
Declan Carlile / Steven Santini
Goalies: Andrei Vasilevskiy and Jonas Johansson
Potential scratches: Boris Katchouk, Maxim Groshev
Injured Reserve: Victor Hedman, Ryan McDonagh, Erik Cernak, Brayden Point
The Lightning have a sizeable amount of talent out injured, their defense looks unimpressive on paper but they have been rolling in the last month. Vasilevskiy is 8-2 with a .933 save% and 1.97 GAA in his last 10 appearances, which has gone a long way towards papering over the losses that they’ve been dealing with.The Mark Donk joke surrounds the Penguins for random players popping up in key roles, it looks like Tampa has taken over on that given this fourth line and most of their defense is looking like NHL video game names in year 8 of a franchise at this point. They do a lot of double shifting from top players situationally to make sure difference makers are on the ice as much as possible (Douglas, for instance has only averaged 5:40 of ice time over his 20 games this season).If Ryan Graves were French Canadian, I’d like to think his last name would be “D’Astous”. It hasn’t been a disaster for the 27-year old Tampa rookie; who spent the majority of two years in the ECHL, two years in Finland and one in Sweden before finally finding his way up the ranks in a path very less taken. Pretty wild to see a player in his situation have almost as many NHL games (19) as combined AHL experience (26). Great story considering he was an ECHL level player in 2022, didn’t get much interest and went to Europe for a few years and now suddenly is in a key role for a first place NHL team. Injury has offered opportunity and he’s made the most of it.
Boy, you can just set your watch to Jake Guentzel scoring 40 goals and 80 points each season, less whatever games missed. His consistency is incredible like that and he’s right on target for it once again at age 31.Kucherov is well off Nathan MacKinnon’s scoring (14 points) but Tampa’s star is coming on hot as of late with 10 points (1G+9A) in his last five games. A lot of that passing has gone to Brandon Hagel, who has found the back of the net six times in the last five games. Tampa is incredibly top-heavy this season, but those top four or five players are really, really good. Add in the ‘big cat’ in goal doing his thing and that has made for a formidable team in the early going of this season.
Tampa smarting after losing their streak
The Lightning should be focused tonight after slipping early and being unable to dig out in time in their last game against the Islanders. Moser knows there’s “more out there”, Tampa will be looking to re-establish that tonight.
Key matchup: Tampa offense vs. Pittsburgh defense
The stats paint a picture where 5v5 could be a scary one for the Penguins tonight. The Pittsburgh defense gives up a lot in terms of shot and goal expectation, bailed out to decent results via good goaltending. The Tampa offense is very strong at shot and chance generation and has good 5v5 scoring results. Surprisingly, the Tampa power play is not very potent given all the talent that they can put on the ice in that situation. Needless to say, it will be a big test and challenge for Tristan Jarry to keep the elite TB offense at bay.
Kevin Hayes – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust
Tommy Novak – Evgeni Malkin – Anthony Mantha
Rutger McGroarty – Ben Kindel – Ville Koivunen
Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Boko Imama
Parker Wotherspoon / Erik Karlsson
Ryan Graves / Connor Clifton
Goalies: Tristan Jarry and Arturs Silovs
Potential Scratches: Joona Koppanen, Matt Dumba, Harrison Brunicke (AHL rehab assignment)
IR: Filip Hallander, Justin Brazeau, Rickard Rakell, Caleb Jones, Noel Acciari
The break in games allowed the Pens to return to Pittsburgh after Monday’s game in Philadelphia, have their Christmas party on Tuesday and get a practice in Wednesday at home before flying down to Florida for today’s game. Always an interesting twist in logistics when a “road trip” takes more turns than simply heading to the next stop for a game.It was an interesting practice, Anthony Mantha didn’t participate as a maintenance day, which could go into explaining his recent downturn of just two goals and two assists in the last 13 games. Joona Koppanen was out with an illness. Brazeau and Acciari were able to practice in full jerseys but Dan Muse said neither will play today and Kyle Dubas added that both are 7-10 days away from returning, and Rickard Rakell will be out for another 3-4 weeks. We’ll tentatively project the same lineup as last game and assume Mantha will be able to go.