No Evgeni Malkin tonight due to an undisclosed upper body injury, Ville Koivunen back in the lineup like he never left (though he did for a few days). Arturs Silovs in net.<\/p>\n
The visiting Colorado Avalanche bring this lineup to the table tonight.<\/p>\n
Colorado gets on the board first, 4:57 into the game. Nathan MacKinnon pressures Parker Wotherspoon, gets the better of him and then is off to the races. Not going to catch that guy. MacKinnon gives Silovs a shoulder shake to throw the goalie off balance then snaps a perfectly placed high shot to finish the individual effort.<\/p>\n
The Penguins find a tying goal, who else but Egor Chinakhov? His latest sets a career-high with 17 goals on a long-range shot. 1-1.<\/p>\n
Sam Malinski gets two shots, the second goes off the post and in. Traffic in front for Silovs was too much with all the puck movement. 2-1 COL back in front.<\/p>\n
Noel Acciari trips a player 200 feet away from his net, it gets called. It only takes the Avalanche five seconds to strike off the opening faceoff. Cale Makar feeds Martin Necas who hammers it home. 3-1 game.<\/p>\n
The tough period continues, a quick pass from behind the net hits Parker Kelly in front for a quick shot. Silovs is off his angle and gets beat to the far side. 4-1.<\/p>\n
The Avs weren\u2019t messing around that period. They smelled blood and ruthlessly converted. Sometimes it was players like MacKinnon or Makar showing why they\u2019re among the league\u2019s best, sometimes it was just situational. Either way a tough go early for the Penguins.<\/p>\n
It appears the Penguins claw back a little on a great effort by Justin Brazeau to fully extend and use all his reach to swing a puck into the net. Colorado challenges for goalie interference and, well, another call against the Pens in this department. There\u2019s the slightest contact at the beginning of the sequence but nothing that seems to prevent the goalie from playing his position and then further contact outside of the crease. Who knows anymore.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh gets a four minute power play when Nazem Kadri high sticks Tommy Novak but it\u2019s not going their way tonight, passes without scoring and the Avs even have a rush the other way.<\/p>\n
Late in the period, Colorado sends another dagger. Devon Toews bombs a shot in off an offensive zone draw, Silovs lets the rebound thud off the middle of his pad and Necas gets to it first. 5-1.<\/p>\n
Deflating period for the Pens to not get yet another GI call go their way. Even then the score would have been 4-2 and still in a major hole but without it the game is elementary at this point.<\/p>\n
By league rule a third period must be played, game sputters along. Colorado gets a long power play and some 5v3 time for a chance for MacKinnon to pad stats and get back in the scoring race but he and they can\u2019t score.<\/p>\n
The Pens\u2019 first line gets on the board to at least get Sidney Crosby a point. Bryan Rust\u2019s forechecking effort ends up having the clearing attempt flutter right to Crosby in front of the net. Crosby uses his skate to settle the puck, kicks it to his stick and bumps a pass over for Rickard Rakell to finish off from in tight. 5-2 game.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s into \u2018pull the goalie cuz who cares\u2019 territory, Colorado doesn\u2019t waste much time to hit the open open. 6-2.<\/p>\n
The first Pittsburgh goal had a lot going on, Kris Letang (finally) recorded his 800th career point after sitting on 799 since March 1st. Sam Girard notched his 200th career assist. And Chinakhov set his new career-high for goals in a season with 17.Noel Acciari\u2019s penalty with the catalyst to spiral this game out of control. The broadcast didn\u2019t like the call against Pittsburgh (shocker) and it was unfortunate that was the only penalty of the period, considering it didn\u2019t create or deny a scoring chance or even alter possession too drastically. It\u2019s a play sometimes the refs don\u2019t always call, but it\u2019s an obvious trip in the offensive zone by a player reaching. That\u2019s more on Acciari for putting himself in the position than the refs to ring him up for it.The other really big swing was the reversed goal in the second. This summer during the offseason, I swear I\u2019m going to find a bunch of clips that the league reviewed (Pittsburgh goals and around the NHL) and then leave it up to the reader to decide if it was deemed a good goal or no goal. At this point, you might as well flip a coin. The process is subjective and by nature never going to be perfect but the discrepancy from night to night on what\u2019s permitted and what\u2019s not has had zero consistency.An old hockey saying goes \u2018you can\u2019t give a good player a bad pass\u2019 and let\u2019s just say Ben Kindel gave Ville Koivunen a bad pass on a 2-on-1 in the second period. Kindel did have to lift the puck off the ice to get it over a stick to get there but it didn\u2019t look like a knee-high grenade when it got to Koivunen. Tough play if the puck bobbled a little as it got to him but in this league that\u2019s one a player has to handle (especially when the recipient is known for making skilled plays with his hands).One player where there\u2019s no doubt about quality is Chinakhov. For a player whose reputation was one of inconsistency coming into the team, it\u2019s funny but that\u2019s actually been a very positive element for him. He shows up every game, and more often than not he\u2019s finding the scoreboard via a goal or assist more often than not.In the big picture, the Penguins get two points out of four from Colorado this season, a team that looks like they are on their way to winning the Presidents Trophy. You can do worse than that. It was also somewhat of a \u2018no harm, no foul\u2019 kind of night, since three of Pittsburgh\u2019s biggest rivals at the moment for playoff spots (NYI, BOS, DET) also lost in regulation and all lost to teams out of the playoffs, no less. Definitely were worse outcomes on the night, though it could have been better since Columbus defeated Philadelphia and CBJ passes the Pens for second place in the division. That\u2019s largely ceremonial aside from home ice, seeing Chicago upset the Islanders and the Bruins drop a game to Toronto are welcome sights at this point.More damaging than the loss itself could be the underlying problems displayed. The broadcast was harping on fatigue but every team is playing a lot this season. The Penguins have now surrendered 48 goals in the last 11 games (4.36 GA per game). That\u2019s not fatigue as an over-arching factor, that\u2019s a goal suppression problem<\/a> via team defense and goaltending woes. It\u2019s a glaring issue at the moment.<\/p>\n The immediate path ahead doesn\u2019t get easier, the Pens have to head to Ottawa to face a hot Senators team that always seems to give them troubles anyways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No Evgeni Malkin tonight due to an undisclosed upper body injury, Ville Koivunen back in the lineup like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[111671,385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-543818","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\/543818","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=543818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}