Pregame
The Penguins start out with the same lineup as last game, save the goalie rotation. The lines wouldn’t last this way for long.
The Maple
Leafs welcome William Nylander back to the lineup following a two-game injury absence and are going with these groups:
First period
The start of the game is lots of skating, few whistles. Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust team up down low, make the centering pass for Filip Hallander and he…shanks the shot well wide of the net. Noel Acciari also leaves the game for unknown reasons. Soon after lines are changed to the following:
Evgeni Malkin jumps up with Crosby and Rust, Ben Kindel centers Anthony Mantha and Ville Koivunen.
The lines get even more mixed up than that at due to only having 11; Connor Dewar breaks up a pass, Philip Tomasino gets a great center lane drive and that opens up a lane for Crosby to find Erik Karlsson inching in along the right side. Karlsson measure up Anthony Stolarz and goes bar down on him. 1-0 Pens.
Owen Pickering tackles a guy in the offensive zone away from the puck, the refs frown upon that. Toronto gets the first power play of the game as a result. The Pens kill it off.
Crazy play develops with the puck flipping up in the air over the ice after Ryan Shea takes a shot that hits Stolarz. It looks like Morgan Rielly hit the puck with his stick, Kindel took a swing but it’s tough to tell if he made contact. Then the puck falls down, hits the ice and slides over the goal-line. The refs immediately call it a good goal, take a video review and confirm what they saw. Goal stands. 2-0 Pens. It’s credited to Kindel, which makes little sense being as the only time he could have touched it was when the puck was above the cross-bar, but hey, who can get immersed in the details, I guess officially he touched it at some point in the scramble and it ended up being good.
Auston Matthews rings a shot off the outside of the post then soon after the horn sounds for the intermission. Shots are 8-5 Pens, action-packed period despite the lack of shots on net.
Second period
We make it to the first TV timeout and Toronto has 0 shots on goal in the period. Always a good sign, the Leafs aren’t having much luck dealing with Pittsburgh’s speed and pressure game in the early going tonight. With just over 10 minutes left, Nylander flings a puck from the right wall, not much of a shot but it counts. Nothing comes of it and within seconds Tomasino is off on a 2-on-1, which he narrowly misses the net.
The Pens get their first power play of the night, courtesy of Evgeni Malkin. Malkin jumps into the play, steals the puck and receives a stick on his hands for it. The power play converts, Malkin feeds Kindel who wires a shot through Stolarz. 3-0 visitors.
You ok, Leafs?
Nylander is headed to the box for Pittsburgh’s second power play of the night. They could have put the dagger in this game with a goal, but aren’t able to get it.
They’ll have to settle for a 3-0 lead and shots of 24-8 in totality through 40 minutes. It’s been even more lopsided on the ice than that, the Leafs are on the struggle bus big time.
Third period
Toronto wakes up finally for the third period, Auston Matthews wins a draw against Crosby and then separates from him. Jake McCabe hits Matthews with a stretch pass and he’s off to the races. Matthews fires a low shot through the five-hole of Jarry to get the Leafs on the board. 3-1 with 16:29 to play.
Toronto gets another shift in the o-zone, a crazy bounce puts the puck on Nylander’s stick after he gloves it down and he gets a backhander through. 3-2 with 15:13 to go.
Timeout by the Pens to break up the momentum. They make it to the TV timeout too, but aren’t out of the woods. Another offensive zone shift begats another Nylander goal, this time a slapshot from way back near the blueline. 3-3 game, 13:05 still to go.
Karlsson takes a punch/crosscheck from Sammy Blais to the back of the head and the Pens are back to the power play. It’s the worst Pittsburgh power play of the night, Matthews got a rush shot that was probably the best scoring chance of the power play.
Toronto gets the go-ahead goal with 6:17 to go. 5’9”, 180 pound Nic Robertson shrugs off Owen Pickering from the wall and drives to the net. Harrison Brunicke can’t get there in time to break it up and Bobby McMann hacks it in. 4-3 TOR.
The Pens pull Jarry and get the puck setup in the offensive zone. They aren’t able to generate much and the final buzzer hits.
Some thoughts
- Loved the game from Karlsson. Yeah, there’s the perfect shot for the goal in the first, beyond that it looked like the bright stage of being in Toronto brought out the best in him. Still a marquee venue and in a game against Nylander was one the Swedish brass were probably well-aware about. Karlsson’s passes were crisp, his gaps were good, he got back on defense skating well. Some nights are better than others for him, tonight was a sharp one.
- It was also funny that the TV broadcast caught Karlsson yelling the f-word during the announcement that Pickering was being penalized, presumably since he soon being going onto the ice to kill the penalty. It’s probably not the best use of Karlsson or his favorite thing to have to be a first choice PKer to start shifts for the role he’s being asked of right now. It’s imperfect but necessary.
- Acciari only made it through two shifts and was announced out by the team with an upper body injury. Surprisingly enough, a bummer to lose Acciari who has been playing really well as of late. At the same time, 11 forwards led to a bunch of combinations that would have never been seen in game situations otherwise and was kind of fun. Dewar-Crosby-Tomasino? Why not? Dewar-Kindel-Koivunen? Sure. Those were the lines on the ice at the time of goals in the first period.
- It was a rough welcome to Rust-asche November for Bryan, who collided with Crosby in the first period and was in some pain, then took an Evgeni Malkin slapshot to the knee in the second period while in front of the net.
- Ben Kindel, what more can you say! The first goal, kinda weird but good things do happen being near the net. Whether it’s the routine (like a backhanded, cross-ice pass in the d-zone, right on the money) or the sublime for a short-side power play goal, he’s just incredible. Maybe even better than the goal — OK let’s not get carried away — almost as good as the goal, was just before that he shot the puck, it got stopped but then Kindel aggressively followed up his shot to prevent TOR from getting a clear and ending the momentum they built. It’s little instances like that, which not every player does, it just creates that kind of magic to open the door for good things to happen.
- The other funny moment was Malkin on the ice motioning to have Rust clear off the broken stick while Malkin had the puck. Rust obliged and seconds later Geno fired the pass right through that area for Kindel to score his PPG.
- Shots were 20-6 at one point, 24-8 after two. Most of those eight shots were from way outside and no chance of any follow-up. Toronto avoided a very embarrassing game by erasing it all with a great third. The Leafs had few answers out there, until they found a great one by starting the third period with a Knies-Matthews-Nylander line. That completely changed the game and seemingly woke Matthews and Nylander up. It was big trouble for the Pens once that came together and started working their magic.
- The Penguins came into the game ranked 32nd in rush chances against, it was very encouraging to see only one odd man rush given up in the first two periods (and 10 for!). If only the game ended there…That reverted in the third period, Toronto got two rush chances right off the bat and Matthews scored on one. Then Matthews even got one shorthanded in the third. That sort of personifies the Penguins; they can be strong for a period of time, but it’s not always going to last consistently for the full 60 minutes. Unfortunately tonight, the wheels came off after about 43 minutes.
- The Pens still had an exit ramp, getting the power play in the third when it was tied 3-3. Perfect chance to go back in front, put a halt to the onslaught and salvage the night. What followed was their worst power play and ended up doing nothing of the sorts. At that moment, it felt very ominous. Minutes later, McMann would score the go-ahead goal and it was about all over. Tough one to take, especially considering the first line (or, the Crosby-Rust parts of the first line) were on ice for all of the first three goals against that got Toronto back in it. Those players needed to step up and get it back in that moment and they weren’t able to deliver.
- This was Brunicke’s ninth NHL game and it’s definitely going to test the patience and tolerance for if the Penguins want to continue with a teenaged defender for the rest of the season. Brunicke couldn’t help Pickering out, though it shouldn’t be lost in the micro-analyzing that the left side defender was ended up completely out of sorts. Still, it hasn’t been smooth for Brunicke lately and that pair isn’t working. I wouldn’t think it surprising if the team came to the conclusion that the NHL level isn’t the right one for the balance of that season. (For that matter, the same could easily apply to Pickering at least at this point too).
- Pittsburgh was 5-0-0 this season when leading after two periods. Up 3-0 and against an opponent that barely had a pulse, this didn’t look like the game that trend would reverse right up until the start of the third.
- Toronto scored four goals on their first 11 shots of the third, but I don’t put too much of that on Jarry. The chances were amazing and the Toronto pressure was building and building. The shot placement from Matthews and Nylander (whose first goal went off the post and in) were likely going in regardless of who the goalie in net was.
Tough one to stomach, on the surface a 4-3 road loss to Toronto at the end of a road trip might not sound a surprising or terrible outcome. Circumstantially, blowing a 3-0 lead and wasting what could have been a very quality performance can only be seen as a disappointment for the Pens. They get a few days to go back home, practice and regroup for Washington coming to town on Thursday night.
