Pregame
Owen Pickering makes his season debut and Arturs Silovs is in net for the Penguins on the back-half of their back-to-back.
First period
The Flyers start out marginally better, but it’s the Penguins who find the first goal. Justin Brazeau dips a shoulder and puts a power move to the net, the right shot from the left side fires off the lower leg pad of goalie Samuel Ersson and has enough heat on it to hit the back of the net. 1-0 Pens.
Pittsburgh gets the first power play but doesn’t do much with it. The Flyers then get a chance when Matt Dumba obstructs a guy and it doesn’t take long for them to get the puck and bodies to the net. Bobby Brink does the honors to find the rebound and lift it past Silovs. 1-1.
Shots are 10-8 PHI through the first. Not that clean of a period for the Pens, but fitting to not be ahead or behind after the first period.
Second period
Bryan Rust draws a penalty on the first shift. Very casual, a word I type as commentator Ray Ferraro also picks to describe Erik Karlsson playing at half speed and seeing a centering pass give Philadelphia and excellent chance. Silovs has to make a huge stop to keep the game tied. Karlsson gets angry with himself and smashes his stick over the top of the goal. The Flyers get out of the box and score on the rush, Travis Konecny shoots far-side on Silovs. 2-1.
Another power play for the Pens, another mighty struggle. This time of the impotent perimeter passing variety. Dumba back to the penalty box for good measure a little later but this time the penalty kill holds on an overlap into the third period.
The Flyers get more chances towards the end of the period, Silovs holds them at bay.
Shots in the second are 14-6 PHI, and it was more lopsided in play than even that metric. Putrid stuff from the Pens, who are lucky that the scoreboard is somehow only 2-1 after two periods.
Third period
Signs of life from Pittsburgh early in the third, they trap the Flyers’ fourth line for an extended time with Ben Kindel all over the puck and ice to gain some rare pressure.
The Flyers let the Pens hang around, hang around, and guess what? Sidney Crosby makes it happen. Crosby’s pass attempt gets banked up and in past Ersson. 2-2 game with 8:03 to play.
The momentum gets halted when Evgeni Malkin takes a slashing call on the back-check. The Pens kill it off. Neither team is able to score again before regulation runs out.
Overtime
Crosby springs Kris Letang for a breakaway, he is slashed. The Pens keep control, Malkin jumps on for the goalie but does so prematurely. The whistle blows when he touches the puck, he scores but it’s no goal. Luckily there is no penalty by rule of the the goalie sub.
Pens get a 4v3 power play out of it. Crosby gets a chance from in tight, the Pens use a timeout to give their top players a breather. Rust makes some incredibly poor puck touches and then almost puts himself offsides and the Pens cough up the puck. Malkin is going to the box this time for a pretty weak hooking call. He was reaching but just lifted a stick.
Philadelphia with a 4v3 close out the game. They seem to end it, Tyson Foerster rings one off the post and in. But the Flyers were offside on the rush and the league reviews it and finds evidence it was offisde. Game continues. And ends.
Zegras, not content with yapping like a toothless chihuahua all night long, takes runs at Penguins with the safety of a ref in front of him. Ok, then…
Shootout
Crosby came off the bench in the post-whistle shenanigans so he can’t take part in the shootout. Zegras is sent to his room without dinner for his petulance.
Konecny, stopped by Silovs.
Rust can’t score on Ersson
—
Matvei Michkov dekes backhand and scores
Malkin is up next and scores!
—
Bobby Brink goes in Round 3, he dekes backhand and scores
Ville Koivunen has to score to keep the game alive, he can’t do it.
Some thoughts
- Justin Brazeau is playing with a ton of confidence right now and it keeps getting rewarded. The shot was possibly misplaced if he was trying to raise it more, but still worked out better that way, being as the goalie was leaning up and not to the post to find room. There’s two schools of thought about the hot streak that a guy with 16 goals in 95 games entering this year can only expect the good fortune to continue so long going up against if it’s working then it doesn’t matter how. Either way, what a story he’s been so far.
- Another game, another post helping the Penguins out. Make it 15 times in 11 games now after Cam York squarely hit the post.
- Good to see Pickering back in the NHL. The team is desperate for LD right now, this is a glorious chance for him to meet the moment and grow his game. Interesting to see him paired with Dumba, makes sense to not have double rookies out there on the road, but presumably sooner or later that’s going to have to be a bridge that gets crossed.
- Also interesting to see Ben Kindel play in the b-2-b and appear in his ninth game. For a team managing his usage, he’s played three games in four days and done well. It’s looking like the decision is not that going to be a clouded one to keep him for a 10th game and start his entry level contract. And though Kyle Dubas points out the team might consider his usage by the time the next major checkpoint of 40 games roles around (to credit a season towards his free agency), for now that’s not a concern.
- The Pens had two shots for a 16+ minute stretch of game play from the end of the first into the second. Completely went to sleep. Can’t have a good PDOenguins game without any shots at all.
- It’s crazy how fast a red hot power play can so quickly morph into one that doesn’t look like they even know what they’re doing at all. Unfortunately, that worm has turned for the Pens – who were 5/10 in three prior games, then didn’t get any power plays at all last night against STL and were totally awful against the Flyers tonight. The sole bit of reassurance comes with knowing an ice cold power play can heat right back up as quickly as it drops off, so stay tuned.
- Kindel was playing on the top power play in the first opportunity, then it was Anthony Mantha for the rest of the game. That’s a note curious just by how infrequently NHL teams will willingly change a part out right in the action. Obviously whatever it was they were looking for wasn’t found, with Mantha at times hanging by the blueline and passing it harmlessly around to Karlsson or Malkin. That’ll need to be adjusted and surely will be quickly.
- For as great as Karlsson has been this season, he reverted to awful play tonight. Hopefully a flush and forget moment. Of course, it wasn’t just him – up and down the lineup the puck management was dreadful and the misplays were prevalent.
- Don’t think words can describe how awful Rust was on the power play in OT. He couldn’t handle the puck cleanly to save his life on multiple occasions. It’ll get lost to time but big yikes for him there.
- Can’t really fault Malkin for either penalty he took. The “slash” was knocking the stick out of a player who was holding his stick with one hand, underhanded at that. Used to be a player’s responsibility to hold onto their stick, now there’s incentive to drop it. The OT penalty was just good defense, he lifted the stick and the Flyer kind of exaggerated the pull back and bought the call. Granted, you can get that call when in on a clean breakaway, but a shame that all added up like it did tonight.
- The Flyers were 75-0-2 at home when leading after two (the 2 being ties) against the Pens, almost broke that one tonight. That’s a stat that sounds impossible to fans of a certain age but old timers will tell you that short of winning the Cup, the sweetest victory was breaking the 0-39-3 streak from 1974-1989 in the Spectrum. Maybe Crosby’s modern day statistical domination is some kind of karmic force balancing that out.
- This game heated up at the end. Each team had a goal disallowed in OT. Zegras channeled his inner Matt Barnaby for unknown reasons (well, Barnaby would have had the courage not to hide behind the ref, anyways), Crosby gets knocked out of the shootout. Malkin scores the rare shootout goal for himself. Pens still lose. What a turn of events.
The Penguins and Flyers haven’t much felt like rivals lately, so at least that changed with some nastiness at the end. Here’s hoping Noel Acciari gets a chance at exacting some revenge on Zegras in the next matchup, he’s earned it. Pittsburgh moves on to play Minnesota on the road Thursday.
