Pregame
Bryan Rust is able to make his season debut and the Penguins flip Hendrix Lapierre and Nick Robertson between lines for some new looks. Arturs Silovs in net for this one.
The Capitals celebrate their home opener with this lineup.
First period
Fireworks aplenty early on. On the very first shift, Trevor van Riemsdyk gets in trouble with a bouncing puck and turns it over to Dylan Strome. Strome springs
Anthony Beauvillier on a breakaway. 1-0 Washington just 23 seconds into the game on the first shot.
The Penguins get in on the action and score on their first shot at the 1:19 mark. Ben Kindel gets in the zone and feeds Rust, it doesn’t take the veteran long to make his classic power move to the net. Puck goes off Logan Thompson and trickles in to tie the game at 1-1.
Pittsburgh gets into penalty trouble, Ville Koivunen goes to the box first on a tripping call. Nick Robertson soon joins him for clearing the puck over the glass to give the Caps 44 seconds of a 5v3 advantage. van Riemsdyk steps up with some nice shot blocks and the Pens escape the danger.
Not for long, though. Kris Letang collects a puck in his zone and reverses it back behind the net. Turns out to be a bad decision since only Pierre-Luc Dubois is back there. Dubois feeds the puck out front and it’s a 2-1 game.
The Penguins get the next power play, doesn’t go very well. The Caps get two rushes up the ice, the Pens don’t really get much out of it for themselves.
Period comes to an end, shots are 14-4 WSH, though it’s a bit more respectable for 9-4 at even strength. Shot attempts are even uglier at 34-11. Pittsburgh getting mostly outworked and bit by defensive breakdowns in the early going.
Second period
Silovs decides he wants to get in on the costly turnover gambit and his stray behind the net goes straight to the Caps. Declan Carlile doesn’t help the cause by spectating and blocking the goalie’s path back to the crease. Good grief. Tom Wilson returns the favor from the last goal and sets up Dubois to make it a 3-1 game.
The Pens got a strong shift of possession and chances out of their first line, wiped away by a brutal cross-ice pass by Carlile that was easily picked off and turned into a 2-on-0 rush. Wilson set up Alex Tuch and there’s not much a goalie can do about that. 4-1 Washington.
Pittsburgh’s second line comes through to stem the tide of the developing blowout. Egor Chinakhov made a nice pass to Evgeni Malkin. Malkin hits the post, Thompson and the Caps’ defense are all out of sorts. Tommy Novak pounces on the rebound and puts it in the net. 4-2.
The fourth line gets in the act next. Kaeden Korczak puts a shot towards the net that Robertson make a beautiful tip on. Robertson had to eat a cross-check in the back for his troubles, which worked out nicely. 4-3 game all of a sudden.
Robertson draws a penalty to really open the door, a goal doesn’t come before intermission stops the play.
As usual, no PIT-WSH game is ever truly completely safe for either team. In the ‘two things can be true category’, the Penguins are playing damaging hockey in a self-inflicted way, and yet they find themselves only down by one shot on the road in a game that they have not been very sharp in.
Third period
The Pens can’t score on the carryover power play, then van Riemsdyk goes to the box for a blatant hooking call to prevent a scoring chance. Pittsburgh almost kills it off but Ryan Leonard fires a wrist shot by Silovs at the end of penalty time. Washington’s lead is 5-3.
Blake Lizotte is the next to head to the penalty box, it’s killed and Lizotte steps back onto the ice sprung on a breakaway that Thompson stops.
The game takes an ugly turn, Dubois puts Carlile into the boards head first, opening up Carlile with some blood. The Pens get a power play and come up empty on it.
Silovs is lifted for the extra skater with plenty of time since the team needs to find two goals. They’re kept mostly to the perimeter and the clock runs out.
Some thoughts
- Kindel has replaced Chinakhov on the top power play. Might be for the best, Chinakhov was looking a little lost in space as a left handed shot setting up mostly on the left side.
- Rough first period for Letang, 10+ years ago he might have had a chance to cut off Beauvillier on the first goal, tough ask either way for an opponent hitting the seam in full stride when the defenseman positions so wide in the first place. The play on the second goal was even worse, basically deserving an assist on that one.
- Easy to beat up on Letang though, each of the first four Washington goals was started or aided by a major miscue of puck management by the Penguins from players all over the lineup. Carlile’s activity on the third and fourth goals against were just as egregious. They’re their own worst enemy right now and most teams are going to accept the gift and make you pay. That’s pretty much the long and short of it right now. These Penguin games are just a race to see whether or not they can out-score the issues they directly create for themselves.
- Rust was the only Penguin forward to register a shot in the first period. At least he scored. By midway in the second period the Pens got an offensive zone faceoff and had Rust back on the top line with Crosby and Rakell. Can’t say that was surprising or unwarranted.
- As Bob Grovepointed out, Crosby went 6-1 in the faceoff circle in the first period, everyone else on the team was 3-11. Pittsburgh entered the night 27th in the young season in faceoffs (45.5%). Without Crosby (55.7% entering the night), they’d be even further down the list.
- Robertson was all over the place. Now a fourth liner, he might be killing more penalties but he’ll need to avoid putting the puck over the glass. Then he scores a goal and draws a penalty late in the second period. Good stuff from a player who got demoted in lines to make an impact.
- Another positive so far: Malkin’s passing in this one. He’s mostly a playmaker and chance creator for others at this point of his career and is starting to stand out with that generation.
- Mostly though, just negative right now. The mistakes are too numerous and too glaring to expect a positive result at the end of the night. The Pens had a shot with a couple of breakaways and power plays late yet they couldn’t make it happen.
This one is out of the way, the team moves on with a meeting in Columbus on Friday night.
