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The Pittsburgh Penguins and Toronto Maple Leafs played a highly entertaining affair in front of a capacity crowd at the CONSOL Energy Center. It was the 300th consecutive sellout in Pittsburgh. After falling behind very early in the 2nd period 4-1, the Penguins fought and clawed their way back to win the game in a shootout 6-5.
Here are the highlights from the game:
Here is the possession chart:
You’ll notice the red line on the chart that flat lined. That indicates how miserable the Leafs were with their puck management in the third period and overtime. During that time period the Leafs generated zero shots on goal, zero.
Given the Penguins injury situation as of late, they are going to have many younger players in the lineup as well as players who otherwise would not be playing in the NHL. The odds of costly mistakes being made naturally goes up.
This is the reality of the Penguins 2013-2014 season. With the salary cap artificially lowered it put teams that spend to the cap in a pinch this season. Filling out depth on the roster and being able to overcome injury becomes an incredibly hard task this season.
In the Penguins case Ray Shero could have gone in one of two directions. The first is that he could gamble on the Penguins being healthy this year and take care of the long term dynamic of his roster. This is the route that Shero chose to go down. At the expense of the bottom 6 forward grouping Shero elected to re-sign Pascal Dupuis and sign Rob Scuderi, moves that are going to help the team for a few years.
The alternative was to not go out and get a guy like Scuderi and focus solely on the 2013-2014 season and shore up the bottom 6. Personally I am glad that Shero did what he chose to do. This will be a tough season at times with the injuries, but moving forward the Penguins will have all of their important pieces signed and in place. Not a bad spot to be in considering the cap will start to shoot up dramatically, allowing Shero to fill in the depth.
The Penguins aren’t the only team afflicted by this artificially lowered cap this season; other teams will struggle if they find themselves with injuries to their top 2 defensemen as well.
Last night the Penguins had a mix of young and old players making some poor choices. Simon Despres took an ill advised interference penalty that led to the Leafs first goal on the power play.
Olli Maatta screwed up by not knowing that it was his turn to go on the ice causing an odd man rush on the Kadri goal.
Marc Andre Fleury decided to copy the one weakness of Patrick Roy’s game, his puck handling.
Kris Letang got absolutely owned by Tyler Bozak behind the net leading to the Kessel goal.
Last but not least Brooks Orpik made a careless and lackadaisical neutral zone turnover at the end of the period which led to a Tyler Bozak goal with 5 seconds left.
Also assisting on the play was Jeff Zatkoff inability to handle the long distance shot.
That was the bad. The good was that the Penguins never lost their competitive fire after being down 4-1. When finding yourself down big early in a game the goal needs to be to keep the game manageable. If you can keep the game within 2 goals you always have a chance of coming back. The only good part about being down 4-1 was the fact it was so incredibly early on in the game.
The real reason the Penguins were able to come back is because a man by the name of Evgeni flipped the switch and was in full blown Geno Machino mode. Evgeni Malkin gave a special performance on Thanksgiving Eve and carried the Penguins back into the game and eventually won it in the shootout.
Malkin was back to firing the puck aggressively and it resulted in his first multi goal game in 66 games. Malkin had 6 shots on goal and when he fires the puck with that frequency there are going to be goals scored.
Malkin has been the Penguins best player for the past two weeks and it will be up to him and Crosby to carry much of the load while the Penguins are missing Martin and Scuderi.
When checking the box score it will look like Kris Letang had a pretty solid night, he finished with 1 goal and 2 assists. The reality is that his play was pretty atrocious for most of the evening. His ability to process the game at high speeds continues to be an issue that affects his puck management decisions and his ability to make the easy play. He is going to have to commit to making the easy play for the next 6-8 weeks as he is catapulted to being the Penguins only option as a #1 defenseman. The Penguins don’t need the million dollar plays being made right now, they need the nickel and dime plays made properly every single time.
James Neal had a goal and an assist last night and that makes for 6 goals and 5 assists in his last 5 games. In these past 5 games he has scored two points in every single contest except for the game against Boston in which he had 3 points. James Neal and Evgeni Malkin are as dynamic of a duo as there is in the NHL at the moment.
Outside of Simon Despres’ bad interference penalty he played a really solid game last night. He certainly looked like he belonged and I don’t think that is too much of a surprise. I do think that he will be on the final roster at the end of the year regardless of how healthy the Penguins are. I believe that if Despres shows he can consistently make good defensive plays that it will place Matt Niskanen in play for Ray Shero to trade. The bottom pairing very well could be Olli Maatta and Simon Despres. You could do a lot worse than Robert Bortuzzo as your 7 defenseman.
Jeff Zatkoff provides some of the lower echelon backup goaltending in the league but he did something that is not very easy, he came into a shootout ice cold and did not allow a goal. But Jeff Zatkoff was in net for the entire third period and overtime why was he ice cold?
Zatkoff was ice cold because the Leafs accomplished something that you almost have to try to do, they did not register a shot on goal for the final 25 minutes of the hockey game. Tyler Bozak’s goal in the 2nd period was the last Maple Leafs shot on goal.
If you are getting subpar goaltending one way to remedy that issue is to not allow a single shot. That strategy seemed to work well for Pittsburgh last night
The Leafs are not a good puck possession team, in fact they are very bad in that area, so it is not a surprise that they were able to be shut down in the shots department. When the Leafs have a lead at even strength they are 29th in the league in puck possession with a dreadful 39.3%. Only the abysmal Buffalo Sabres are worse at a laughable 27.2%.
The Penguins will enjoy Thanksgiving and then it’s off to Florida for a back to back against the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone that comes here to read about the Penguins. I am very thankful for the positive response and reception that I have received since taking over for John in late June.
Thanks for reading!
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