Pittsburgh is back in the win column after Phil Kessel’s opportunistic offensive awareness made up for a lack of territorial play. Phil accomplished one of the more rare feats in the NHL, a natural hat trick.
Evgeni Malkin came strong with his passing game last night and finished the game with 3 assists.
Casey DeSmith was another standout player for the Penguins. He was able to stop 31 out of 33 shots to preserve the victory. Vegas had their feet on the gas pedal the entire night. If DeSmith put up a 2018-19 Matt Murray performance the Penguins would have lost. Vegas thoroughly outplayed the Penguins score effects or not.
That’s just ugly. You will lose more times than not playing that way. The lower left corner is not where you want to be and that is exactly where Jack Johnson and Justin Schultz were. They were terrible. They were so bad that Ryan Reaves(!) and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare had a 2 on 0 that DeSmith had to bail them out of. Everybody else on the team is pretty much bunched to varying degrees of success, not them. Olli Maatta should not be taken out of the lineup for that rubbish. Juuso Riikola made an argument for his spot in the lineup. So who should be taken out? It would probably be Riikola or Oleksiak and not Jack Johnson, which is too bad.
Daniel Sprong is working his tail end off during his shifts. Unfortunately, I believe he’s working hard and not smart. They have him so transfixed on “playing the right way” that he’s just skating as hard as he can everywhere and not having enough energy to do more useful things that make up his strengths. If Sprong cheated like Kessel for breakaways he would be reprimanded even though that plays to his strengths much like it does Kessel. Give the kid some breathing room to do what he does. Playing the right way is maximizing a player’s strengths. Not dumbing them down into a robot.
Pittsburgh gets Montreal again on Saturday.
Thanks for reading!
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