Two lineup changes for the Penguins, Elmer Soderblom subs in for Ville Koivunen and Spencer Stastney replaces the injured Trevor van Riemsdyk. Arturs Silovs picks up the start.
The visiting Stars have this lineup for the evening.
Low event first period, shots in the first ten minutes are 2-1 in favor of Dallas when Declan Carlile takes the first minor penalty of the night. The Pittsburgh PK handles its business.
Mikko Rantanen goes to the box two separate times before the end of the period. Not much to write about with the discombobulated Penguin power play, though Ben Kindel does send a shot narrowly missing the net on the latter.
The Pens score the first goal in the final minute, Kris Letang drives to the net and the puck clips off a Star player and into the net. Hold the phone, Dallas challenges for a Pittsburgh high stick on the play and sure enough, Hendrix Lapierre got his twig above his shoulders to knock down a puck seconds before the goal was scored, negating the play.
Period ends scoreless, shots are 5-4 DAL.
It’s back-and-forth in another quiet first half of a period. Miro Heiskanen goes off for putting the puck over the glass. They get some zone time and a few looks, more than you can say about most of them these days.
The tactical game continues on, both teams work for the occasional chance. Silovs is strong with a push and his leg to trap the puck on a Tyler Seguin effort. Luckily there was no follow-up drive by the Stars to the net in time.
Nils Lundqvist loses the offensive blueline and is forced to latch onto Rickard Rakell to prevent a breakaway to generate another Penguin power play chance. Bryan Rust makes a nice spinning pass for Tommy Novak but the puck clicks off a Dallas player and goes off target.
Still no score after two periods, Pittsburgh leads in the shot department 15-13.
The Pens can’t score on the carryover power play time, the lines cycle through and the fourth line comes through. Connor Dewar scores his first of the year on a backhand that hit a Stars player in front. Jake Oettinger loses a shutout streak that was close to 190 minutes. Pens up 1-0, still 18:03 to play.
Not long after, the Stars get their second power play of the game, Lapierre is off for tripping. They get some good looks based on their skilled passing, Silovs is there to keep them from scoring.
Deep into the game Lian Bischel throws Rust into the net without reason and gets whistled for it. Might have been bait, the Pens’ power play bumbles again. Ben Kindel makes an ill-advised pass back to Rakell, it gets picked off and Rakell resorts to tackling the Dallas player. Can’t do that, it’s 4v4. Play cycles through, Dallas gets a quick power play that gets killed.
Oettinger is pulled for the extra attacker. Silovs shuts down a shot from Rantanen right in front of the net. The Stars take a timeout with 37 seconds left to regroup for a final push.
It pays off, the Stars win the draw and Seguin deflects an outside shot in with 29 seconds left. 1-1 game.
The Pens almost make it the distance, but not quite. OT for the second night in a row looms.
The Pens get the better of the chances, Rakell and Karlsson almost combine to win it, then Chinakhov leads a 3v1 rush. Malkin gets a few looks at the death of OT, he doesn’t score.
The Pens shoot first, it’s Kindel. He winds in slowly from the right side, cuts to the middle and snaps a shot back across his body and inside the post to Oettinger’s right.
Jason Robertson takes the first turn for the Stars. No dice
Crosby takes a turn for the Pens, and he basically copies Kindel’s move in opposite since he’s a left shot coming in front the left side, cutting to the middle and then shooting back to Oettinger’s right.
Tyler Seguin has to score to keep the game alive, he does.
Chinakhov can win it for the Pens, his five-hole shot hits the inside of the goalie and then the post.
Wyatt Johnston has to score to keep the game alive, he does, lifting a shot over Silovs’ shoulder.
Rakell is up in Round 4, he comes in from the left, gets to the middle and lifts a beautiful shot to the top shelf.
Rantanen has to score, Silovs stops his shot. Pens win a shootout.
Quiet start for the Penguins, which isn’t half bad since they didn’t make any glaring mistakes or show terrible puck management. On the other side of the coin, the last three games in the first period they’ve registered 4 shots, 3 shots and 4 shots again tonight. That kind of output isn’t going to cut it, especially on a night like tonight where there was four full minutes of power play time and not a lot of pucks on target.That sour note aside, what a fine defensive performance it was by the Pens out of no where, after a few really bad games in that department. Everyone was skating hard, Malkin was backchecking, Rust was picking up slack and hustling to cover up on defense, Rakell was lifting sticks. Chinakhov was winning pucks in the middle of the ice. The outlet passes from the defense were timely. The team won over 50% of their faceoffs in a game (I believe for the first time this season). And on and on. Very impressive performance from top to bottom for a team that wasn’t looking good at details very recently and practically flawless tonight for playing smart, clean and minding the small details…Up until that last faceoff anyways.Last night we wrote that Lapierre was practically invisible, tonight he made his presence felt in an unfortunate way to knock down a puck and wipe off a goal. Reaction type of play, is what it is but not a shining moment, neither was taking a third period penalty not long after the Penguins took the lead.Robertson has a way of drawing penalties lately with his speed and motor to get involved. He only drew eight last season with Toronto in 78 games, he drew a third tonight (and second in as many days).You know what would have been nice in a tight game where not much was going on for large stretches? A power play goal. The Pens had four cracks at it in the first two periods to break the ice and get on the board, couldn’t make it happen and only came close to scoring on a small handful of chances. That’s a kind of make or break opportunity that it hurt to come up empty after so many chances (Dallas only had one of their own).It was a nice first impression for Stastney as a Penguin. Understandably, they didn’t ask a ton out of a player who has all of one practice and one gameday skate with the team, he acquitted himself well out there. As advertised, he can skate well and his positioning looked pretty good. We’ll see what the future holds, probably isn’t going to shake up the entire roster, just nice to see a perfectly acceptable debut at a spot that the team can use.Kindel and Chinakhov starting OT instead of Crosby (and usually Rust) feels like something of a quiet small sign that’s a passing of the torch to the next generation. Sadly there’s been a lot of that, quiet game for Crosby and the first line. You’d like to say slow start but it’s concerning how little impact that the captain is having. Rakell too is nearly invisible these days during the course of play, which can’t be helping the cause.Then again, both Crosby and Rakell score in the shootout. Hopefully that lifts the spirits and translates during the play for them.Speaking of that, do we think: A) Crosby has been working on that shootout move or B) he saw what Kindel did and instantly applied that on a hunch? Tend to lean B on this, which really speaks to his adaptability and processing. From watching it, Crosby basically copied the exact timing, hesitation and shot placement of the youngster. Shootout is a young person’s game with the skill, creativity, fast twitch and execution – nice to see the old dog pickup a new trick.Kinda seems like you never know what you’re going to get from Silovs from game to game. Maybe he’ll give up 5. Maybe he’ll be great. It was the latter on this night, didn’t have a ton of work but the shots thrown his way were of a pretty good quality. The only puck that got by him was a deflection that he didn’t have much a chance on. Everything else he was very solid (we’ll let another blunder playing the puck behind the net into traffic slide on the ‘no harm, no foul’ criteria).With a road trip on the horizon, losing tonight would have meant going into it on a four-game skid (0-2-1 before tonight). Not ideal. Then giving up a late goal and having to face a shootout made the odds a little longer to get a positive result. Picking up the two points on the second night of a b-2-b against a quality team is a great outcome.
The offense and key some players aren’t hitting on all cylinders right now, this was more a heart ‘n soul type win. Silovs was battling. Dewar found a way to get the puck into the net. The team defensive effort was seriously impressive. It wasn’t the prettiest, but from top to bottom this has to stand right up there as the top performance the Pens have had since the big opening night blowout win over the Flyers. Could be something to build on heading out on the road next week.
It’s also a survival point too, completing a five-game-in-eight-day stretch where the Pens salvaged a 2-2-1 record. Considering how things looked about halfway through the Columbus game last night, that’s no small feat.