Ryan Shea isn’t able to play so the Penguins turn to Ryan Graves to make a rare NHL lineup appearance. Stuart Skinner gets the start in net.
The visiting Carolina Hurricanes bring the following lineup for today’s game.
Carolina chose to put the Jordan Staal line out for the opening faceoff, in response Dan Muse put his fourth line and third defensive pair out to meet them and that didn’t work out for the Penguins. Nik Ehlers skated around Graves, who had to trip the forward to prevent further damage. The Hurricanes got the goal anyways quickly on the ensuing power play, Sebastian Aho’s shot deflected off the stick of Connor Dewar and slung into the net. Carolina scores only 47 seconds into the game.
The Penguins don’t get a lot going against the fierce Carolina forecheck. It takes until 8:00 remaining for Pittsburgh to get their first official shot on goal.
Not much fun, Carolina’s man-to-man system is gumming up the Pens early. It very much looks like Pittsburgh played yesterday and the Canes didn’t, but it’s still just a 1-0 game.
Game chugs along, the floppin’ Canes are at it again when Andrei Svechnikov throws himself to the ice following the slightest of shoves from 170 pound Sam Girard. The refs fall for it and give Carolina a power play. They cash in on it, Noel Acciari can’t block the big shot from the point by Nik Ehlers, 2-0 game.
Carolina keeps pushing, Parker Wotherspoon wins a puck and chips it into the corner, he chases himself and his forwards aren’t really connected to the play and basically just stand there. The Hurricanes get it back and to Jalen Chatfield at the point. Chatfield pumps a shot on net that Egor Chinakhov gets a piece of as it flies past Skinner. 3-0.
Bryan Rust gets tripped up, the Penguins earn their first power play of the game. Even that’s not working today, Skinner has to make a few stops on Aho and Seth Jarvis.
The Hurricanes get a power play a little later when it’s time for Taylor Hall’s dive o’ the night, impressively throwing both his feet out to fall belly first. Anthony Mantha seems to be peeved by Hall’s theatrics and smushes him while down, taking a penalty too. Hall picks up an unsportsmanlike penalty too. Carolina cashes in on the power, Jarvis scores from in front on the nice pass from Ehlers. 4-0.
Rough go for the Penguins, this isn’t the type of opponent to play a C or D game against and stay close.
Hall gets a breakaway early, Skinner stops him.
Erik Karlsson heads to the box for slashing, Carolina gets plenty of looks but Skinner is there to stop them all.
Like in the first period it takes about 12 minutes for Pittsburgh to get a shot on goal in the third.
Shortly after the penalty, the Pens at least break the shutout. Chinakhov takes a pass from Rust and is in alone, whipping a shot past Frederik Andersen. 4-1.
The Pens had an offensive zone faceoff coming out of the last TV timeout with just over four minutes remaining, so why not pull the goalie? The struggle continues for a while before Mark Jankowski finally hits the empty net with about a minute to go.
It didn’t take Graves long to leave a mark in his first NHL game since January 21st (and only his fourth since December 14th) by getting walked around and taking a penalty in the opening seconds of the contest. More ugly stuff out of him. Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour may have outfoxed Muse by getting him to play his worst players right off the bat in the name of avoiding the matchup.Muse might have learned his lesson: the Crosby line with Karlsson went out for the start of the second and third periods, no longer running from the matchup against Staal. The tone was already set by that point, though.Even putting Graves back into the lineup after all this time ought be questioned for the wisdom behind it. Granted, Ilya Solovyov has had his own recent struggles lately but there’s gotta be a better or different option (where have you gone, Owen Pickering four seasons after being drafted?). The Pens can’t be one injury away from using Ryan Graves in an NHL lineup and expect to do very well.Remember when Justin Brazeau used to score goals? That was fun. Only four in his last 28 games now, and two in the last 18 games. That breaks down further to one goal in the last 10 games (with the Pens already winning 4-0 in the third period when he scored).The Hurricanes put on a clinic today in many areas. The power play was one, scoring three power play goals on their first three opportunities. Only took a total of 2:03 to score them too. Power plays don’t get paid by the hour, they’re out there to score and score quickly. No issues on that for the Canes today.On the flip side of that, the Pittsburgh penalty kill came into the day at 84.2% on the season, just narrowly above second place Chicago’s 84.1%. That unit allowing three goals today on four chances won’t make their current stay in first place in that category a long one.I seriously don’t know how the league doesn’t fine Taylor Hall like every game for embellishment. What an LOL that guy is, comically leaving his skates in, what, every single PIT/CAR recent game lately (and more than that, with an official penalty for a dive against LAK last month). Ridiculous stuff, can’t even remember the last time a player’s reputation soured with me so quickly.To try and find some juice the Pens shook up lines in the third period and had a number of different combinations: Chinakhov-Crosby-Rust (scored a goal), Rakell-Crosby-Chinakhov got a shift together, Malkin+Mantha took one shift with Kindel and those wingers had another with Novak, Rust and Kindel took a shift with Brazeau. The Pens pulled their goalie and put Malkin-Rust-Rakell and Malkin out with Letang and Karlsson.The Hurricanes were the better team today, sometimes a good team is going to flex their muscles and show why they’re in first place in the conference and right up there in the league. Today’s matchup concludes three PIT/CAR games in 12 days, Pittsburgh managed to go 0-1-2 in the three losses. They may have deserved a little better, but then again they may have deserved a little worse than picking up two total points. The games were battles, though most the time it was Carolina controlling play and landing one more shot along the way.And, I guess in the bigger picture if you want to find a silver lining, Pittsburgh takes .500% of the point share from Carolina on the season series, even though they only won one game (1-1-2). The Hurricanes are now 10 points up on Pittsburgh in the standings with 12 games to go, they’re almost surely heading for a division championship, a team can do a lot worse than taking a half share of points in the season series.
Well, it doesn’t get much easier – the Colorado Avalanche are up next and surely will be looking for some revenge off last week’s big loss they suffered to the Penguins. The Pens beat the Avs once, now they’ll be looking to beat them again on Tuesday.