It\u2019s the same lineup from last game for the Penguins since Yegor Chinakhov couldn\u2019t arrive in time to get ready, though Stuart Skinner takes over in net for the night.<\/p>\n
The banged up Hurricanes bring in a lineup without one of their top forwards (Seth Jarvis), a top defender (Jaccob Slavin) and goalie (Pyotr Kochetkov) being out injured for the second half of a back-to-back for them too.<\/p>\n
The game gets off to a hot start, Bryan Rust kisses a puck off the crossbar and then Skinner has to be ready for a close chance within the first 40 seconds.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the Pens who strike first, Rust gets in on the forecheck and Rickard Rakell makes a great pass over to Sidney Crosby. The captain makes no mistakes getting a quick shot away to serve as his 21st goal of the season to open up the scoring tonight.<\/p>\n
Later in the period Justin Brazeau keeps the good times going receiving a long lead pass from Brett Kulak. Brazeau lunges at the puck as he falls and chips it over the glove of Frederik Andersen. 2-0 Pens.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh gets a chance to go for the jugular early when K\u2019Andre Miller gets rung up on the first penalty of the night. They get it. Anthony Mantha strikes from in front of the net off a big Andersen rebound from a weak Rust shot. 3-0 Pens with 2:48 to go.<\/p>\n
Carolina takes another penalty in the the very next shift after that goal, the Pens can\u2019t put it really out of hand early. Skinner, in fact, makes the best stop from in tight on Mike Reilly.<\/p>\n
Shots are 13-10 PIT early, in about a perfect opening period for the home team.<\/p>\n
The second period zips along with no penalties or goals until 4:52 is left. Tommy Novak cuts into the zone and there\u2019s some traffic in front so he throws it to the net. Andersen\u2019s got nothin\u2019. 4-0 Pens.<\/p>\n
Three minutes later, Mantha grabs his second goal of the night via a give-and-go with Brazeau to make it 5-0 Pens.<\/p>\n
Carolina finally answers and just 17 seconds after the Mantha goal. Joel Nystrom gives a long pass out to Mark Jankowski and the former Penguin shoots a nice shot by the glove of Skinner. 5-1.<\/p>\n
Carolina isn\u2019t totally whipped as evidenced by their first goal, but they\u2019re way behind. 5-1 and it\u2019s been almost all Pens for the first 40 minutes.<\/p>\n
Third chugs along, Skinner gets a little lucky with a Jordan Staal shot going off the knob of his stick and ramping away from the net, then makes a quality save in tight to help steer it away. Not much else going on as the teams play out the stretch and the Pens skate away with as easy a victory against a team like Carolina as you\u2019ll ever see.<\/p>\n
That puts a bow on 2025 for the Penguins, but the games don\u2019t stop in the least. Two more coming up in quick succession on Thursday and Saturday afternoon against the suddenly formidable Red Wings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s the same lineup from last game for the Penguins since Yegor Chinakhov couldn\u2019t arrive in time to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[111671,385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-379561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-game-recaps","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}