Sidney Crosby makes his return to the lineup from injury. Stuart Skinner plays in net.<\/p>\n
The Carolina Hurricanes are using this lineup for today\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
Pretty good start for the Penguins, their fourth line gets a few chances with Noel Acciari trying to muscle a puck in from in close. No dice. Elmer Soderblom draws a penalty on their next shift with shots at 7-2 PIT.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when things sour, the Hurricanes control the opening faceoff and Jordan Staal uses the wall for an indirect pass out for Jordan Martinook to skate into. It\u2019s a clean breakaway and he beats Skinner. 1-0 Carolina.<\/p>\n
Skinner has to make a save on that power play to keep the Hurricanes from a second shorthanded goal.<\/p>\n
The Penguins spiral from there, almost every time they touch the puck it\u2019s turned over within seconds. That\u2019s particularly concerning on defense where Carolina\u2019s forecheck creates absolute havoc on practically every defender besides Ryan Shea (and that\u2019s only because Shea didn\u2019t handle the puck much). The worst looked like a giveaway before Ilya Solovyov before later Kris Letang handed one right to Logan Stankoven in front of the net.<\/p>\n
Skinner stops Sebastian Aho before the final horn at the side of the net. Somehow they escape the period only down 1-0 with a chance to regroup and find redemption from an ugly, mistake-filled start.<\/p>\n
The Pens aren\u2019t exactly able to get it in gear, failing to get a shot on net for almost the first half of the period. Then, out of the blue, Crosby scores. The captain keeps the play possible by leaning out and touching a puck to negate icing. Rickard Rakell does his job on the forecheck to steer the defender to the wall and the puck pops out to Crosby in front of the net who slides it under Frederik Andersen. 1-1 game.<\/p>\n
Not wanting to let the Pens get too much momentum, Carolina is wise to send them to the power play (they probably don\u2019t see it that way, but on this night that\u2019s the case). The Pittsburgh power play is awful again, this time giving up a clean breakaway to Seth Jarvis. Skinner keeps the puck out of the net.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes get their first power play when Taylor Hall, shockingly, falls under the slightest bit of pressure. The Pens escape the power play but immediately afterwards Solovyov leaves his feet and Jackson Blake simply skates around him and drives the net. The power move works as the puck gets jammed in from close. 2-1 CAR back in front.<\/p>\n
Crosby and Andrei Svechnikov get tangled up and both go to the penalty box. Svechnikov doesn\u2019t go quietly and picks up an additional two minutes for his troubles.<\/p>\n
It hasn\u2019t been nice but mainly thanks to Skinner, the Pens are still hanging around in this one.<\/p>\n
Jordan Staal sticks his foot out to trip Evgeni Malkin and the Pens get an extended 5v3, albeit with Crosby trapped in the penalty box. At first, the comedy of horrors for the power play continues when the puck trickles over Malkin\u2019s stick and out of the zone. But Pittsburgh regroups, Erik Karlsson calls his own number with a big blast from the outside. 2-2.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes find an answer quickly, courtesy of another Penguin turnover (this time via Elmer Soderblom). A quick passing play leaves Hall wide open and he finishes by lifting a backhander over Skinner. 3-2 Carolina back in front.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a battle for the Pens to get the puck out of their zone before Carolina hacks it back in. They catch something of a break, though it\u2019s a break well-earned by effort when Bryan Rust forces the excellent Jaccob Slavin to cough up a puck at the blueline. It\u2019s a race down the ice with Rust holding off Slavin while finding the extra-friendly five-hole of Andersen. 3-3 game.<\/p>\n
A questionably-timed penalty to Crosby puts Carolina on the power play with 7:43 to go, and they score another go-ahead goal. Nik Ehlers skates the puck from out behind the net and passes through Shea like he\u2019s not even there. Stankoven is there to quickly fling it in. 4-3 CAR seesaws back in front.<\/p>\n
Undaunted, Karlsson makes another play to tie the game yet again. First he dances Aho, then gets the puck to the net. There\u2019s some traffic in front but Andersen isn\u2019t keeping much out that\u2019s heading his way.<\/p>\n
The Pens find a way to be the first team to score consecutively at a great time, Anthony Mantha makes a beautiful pass over to Ben Kindel who has space. Kindel buries a top shelf shot. 5-4, the Pens have their first lead of the night with only 4:51 to go.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Carolina\u2019s turn to rally and they come through. K\u2019Andre Miller snaps a hard shot that might pinball around before it hits the back of the net. 5-5 game now.<\/p>\n
Each team gets some cracks on the 3v3, Pittsburgh gets their golden chance when Kindel has an open lane, Andersen makes what seems like his first big stop. It turns out to be the one the Canes needed, they go down the ice, find a cross-ice pass and the lateral movement-induced one-timer is enough to beat Skinner.<\/p>\n
Carolina losing 5-1 last night might have been the worst thing to happen to the Penguins tonight. They obviously weren\u2019t going to stand for two poor outings in a row and came out with a fury. It was good fortune (and a lot of good goaltending) that the Pens stayed within arm\u2019s reach of the game.If you knew, say at the end of the first period or the end of the second, or shoot even with six or seven minutes left in the third period when the score was 4-3 CAR that Pittsburgh would get a point out of the night, that would have seemed like a good proposition. In the end, the Pens failed to protect a 5-4 lead and let more chances to win in OT come up just a little bit short, which stings at the end.While you have to give a lot of credit to the Hurricanes playing hungrier, in some ways you have to wonder if this effort was the result for the Pens of playing a 10th game in March on the 18th day of the month (after playing two times in the last three days of February, no less). It\u2019s the fifth game on the road in nine days with a lot of miles in between. That\u2019s no outright excuse since Carolina has played a lot lately too, just perhaps a reality of the grind wearing a team down and making them just a little bit slower. And playing just a little bit slow against Carolina leaves a team liable to be in big trouble.And while the above could be explainer or excuse, it didn\u2019t help watching that power play operate. Those guys looked like they were new to the sport at times with lackadaisical play.That said, a 2-1-2 road trip against Carolina twice, Vegas, Utah and Colorado isn\u2019t the worst outcome in the world. Six points in five games against that caliber of clubs isn\u2019t bad.The Pens haven\u2019t won in Carolina since 2018, but I think in Bob Errey lingo the two OTL over the last eight days in Raleigh adds up to essentially one victory\u2019s worth of points in NHL math.Solovyov and Clifton are, woof, very, very bad at times. Letang\u2019s not much better. Tough to survive with so many mistakes, Solovyov\u2019s poor decision on the Blake goal is enough to make me want to pull hair out. There\u2019s something about him where he\u2019s not bad and passable at times but then his mistakes end up catastrophic.We need live updates from Bryan Trottier and Kevin Stevens about the proclivity of Taylor Hall to lay on the ice (iykyk, if not well it\u2019s very nsfw and given some of the language, well maybe that\u2019s not needed). Not since Brian Bellows has a player been so weak on their skates! That\u2019s about all anyone on Penguin social media can harp on, not without merit.Good ol\u2019 reliable Rust scored another big goal in the third period that gave the team life there for a while. Just seems like anytime someone steps up late in the game with a massive goal, it\u2019s him. 26 on the season.What a punch\/counterpunch game it ended up being with the teams ending up evenly trading goals. Four times Carolina took the lead, four times the Pens found a way to answer it. What a great game it ended up being.That\u2019s about the best goalie performance that ends up in six goals in the net in a long time by Stuart Skinner. Carolina generated 82 shot attempts, 45 scoring chances and untold shorthanded breakaways. It was a lot to deal with all night considering how futile the decision making often was by Penguin players. Shame Miller was able to sneak that late tying goal in the third period in, Skinner was that one stop away from pulling a rabbit out of his hat.Really nice two-goal night from Erik Karlsson. Run out of positive adjectives on describing him for how he\u2019s playing these days, it\u2019s quite incredible. This is the guy the Penguins wanted to add back in 2023, he\u2019s playing to an exceptional level.Always a pleasure to see Crosby get to compete and be out there. In some ways, he didn\u2019t miss a beat with the fine details of his game (like reaching out to keep a play alive, then converting to score his goal). Naturally, he hasn\u2019t played in four weeks and that showed at times too. Nothing a couple more days of work won\u2019t fix.<\/p>\n
On one hand, it\u2019s admirable to stand toe-to-toe with a team like Carolina. The Penguins don\u2019t phone it in or ever stop trying, gotta give them credit for that. At times they aren\u2019t sharp enough to ever get in a position to win, yet tonight they very nearly did. One point for all their efforts and maybe more importantly the chance to get two days off and go back home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sidney Crosby makes his return to the lineup from injury. Stuart Skinner plays in net. The Carolina Hurricanes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[111671,385,99],"class_list":["post-532179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-game-recaps","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532179","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=532179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}