Pittsburgh started their road trip with a 4-1 loss to the Nashville Predators. They also started the road trip playing well. It is hard to be upset with how you play if you finish the game with a 73.08 xGF%. They certainly didn’t lay an egg.
The big difference in the game was Juuse Saros who stopped 35 out of 36 shots for the victory. Casey DeSmith didn’t play poorly, but he also didn’t stop the similar high-danger shots Saros did. The Penguins had nine high-danger shots last night to the Predators two. Saros stopped all eight and DeSmith went one for two. Despite being 5’11” Saros is carving out quite a career. It is like seeing a unicorn when you have an NHL goalie under six feet these days. He’s .932 at 5v5 this year and fourth in the league with 16.70 goals saved above average per Natural Stat Trick.
Mike Sullivan finally did the thing. He bumped Bryan Rust over to the Evgeni Malkin line. Evan Rodrigues was promoted to the Crosby line. I think this will pay dividends if he sticks with it. The Crosby line didn’t suffer at all. The Malkin line had a strong start to the game. At one point Crosby was CF 8 CA 1 and Malkin was CF 7 CA 2. Things slowed down for Malkin as he finished CF 12 CA 8. Crosby finished CF 22 CA 8. Sid will be just fine sharing the wealth.
Maybe my eyes deceived me, but I think I saw Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin on the ice at the same time at 5v5 on multiple occasions last night. Perhaps it was on accident. I don’t think it was an accident due to the fact they were together 3:43. Let’s keep this going. If you need a scoring winger and haven’t acquired the scoring winger yet then get creative and use TV timeouts, after penalty kills, and end of periods to load up.
The Penguins have done a great job over the years scoring off of faceoff plays. Last night the Predators gave them a taste of their own medicine with time waning in the first period.
The Penguins returned the favor for their lone goal of the game. Kris Letang threaded a pass across to Jake Guentzel who did what he does best and that is pick open spots accurately.
Kris Letang had some memorable moments last night, both good and bad. He had the primary assist on the Penguins only goal and he also dished this amazing pass to Kasperi Kapanen.
It reminds me of a pass Erik Karlsson made a few years back
The difference being Mike Hoffman actually scored and Kasperi Kapanen has forgotten how to do that. How bad has Kapanen been?
Not great!
Letang did finish the game CF 14 CA 6, but he also had a big blunder when he and Mike Matheson almost crashed into one another at the offensive blue line leading to a Predators breakaway which they scored on. Letang also took a bad tripping call later in the game when coming back was still manageable. The blunder with Matheson will get a lot of attention. They haven’t played a lot together. Will this lead to Dumoulin returning to the top pairing? I would hold off and give Matheson a little more run. Despite the mistake on the blue line the Penguins played a really strong game overall. Let’s see if Matheson can survive without the sheltered minutes and playing with the Penguins best defender for a stretch.
Alexander Ovechkin has officially passed Jaromir Jagr as the most prolific European scorer in NHL history. He also may have started the latest #JagrWatch Watch your back, Alex
Thanks for reading!
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