1 week ago
2
Pregame
The Penguins get Ville Koivunen back in the lineup for Rutger McGroarty and rotate their goalies.
The Blue Jackets are opting to use the same lineup from their victory yesterday over Buffalo, including keeping Jet Greaves in the net for a second day in a row.
First period
The decision to get Koivunen back into the lineup pays instant dividends. Koivunen plays with some hunger in his return to the lineup on his very first shift, sending a shot off the knob of Greaves’s stick and then knocking in the rebound of a Ben Kindel shot from in front to open the scoring just 1:50 into the game.
Pittsburgh carries all the early play, Columbus doesn’t get a shot on goal for almost six minutes. When they do, they score. The worm starts to turn when Justin Brazeau sent a pass a little off the mark for Anthony Mantha and the latter opted not to shoot the puck as a result. When this team starts passing up shots and looking to make everything perfect, bad things usually follow and it did here. CBJ gets to the offensive end. Denton Mateychuk rips a shot that Dmitri Voronkov deflects downward from point blank range. 1-1 game.
The Blue Jackets strike again just 17 seconds later. Not a great sequence for Kindel as he fails to knock the puck off course coming up the ice and then sees Mason Marchment slip behind him and come free for the go-ahead goal.
Another big turning point happens towards the end of the period. The Pens’ fourth line gets a chance but Connor Dewar can’t put it home. That line gets trapped in their own end, this time a Mateychuk shot is blocked by Blake Lizotte but becomes a bit of a broken play when it bounces straight to Zach Werenski. Werenski quickly feeds it down to Kirill Marchenko to lift into the net from a tight angle. 3-1 game now.
Shots in the first are 11-9 CBJ, nothing for the Penguins in the last 10:42 in the shot department. Pittsburgh was great in the opening 7-8 minutes then watched as the Jackets took control in a major way over the second half of the period.
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Second period
It doesn’t get any better in the early going, Boone Jenner bumps Kris Letang off a puck and then creates traffic in front of the net. That’s all Werenski needs to flick a shot from the blueline that Silovs never sees, which makes it hard to stop. 4-1 game 47 seconds into the middle frame.
Pittsburgh tries to chip away and even builds a few quality shifts but can’t find any goals. They get another chance when Adam Fantilli is off to the penalty box for just the second power play of the game. Nothing comes of a sloppy and disjointed two minutes.
The Pens find their goal before the end of the period. Dewar keeps the puck in the zone and feeds Noel Acciari wide open in the slot. Acciari fires in his fourth goal of the season to bring the score to 4-2 and bring Pittsburgh back within shouting distance.
At the end, the Pens came into the second period two goals, they leave still down by two. Shots overall are 29-18 in favor of PIT.
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Third period
Columbus takes their third penalty of the night. At first it performs really poorly again, the second group gets out there and Tommy Novak fires a one-timer from the middle up past Greaves. 4-3 game and still plenty of time with over 16 minutes left.
Silovs gets pulled for the extra player with 2 minutes left, They get setup in the zone for some 6v5 offense but get very little to the net, until Rickard Rakell scores with 12.8 seconds to go!
Well, as mentioned in the preview, both of these teams are allergic to holding third period leads – today it was Columbus coughing up a multi-goal lead.
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Overtime
Kindel, Karlsson and Rakell start things out, they hold the puck for the first 30 seconds, chase it for the next 30, getting it back before getting off the ice.
Play seems to settle as much as it can in 3v3, then the Pens make a change and Crosby sneaks on the ice. Chinakohov played the puck up quickly to Erik Karlsson who laid a pass to the middle for a wide-open Crosby. The captain dekes to the backhand and his five-hole shot slides in. 5-4, Pens win.
Some thoughts
Great coaching move by Dan Muse to get Koivunen back in the lineup for the first time since Tuesday’s game. It’s one of those things that worked out perfectly, Koivunen wasn’t doing enough to keep playing indefinitely and certainly used the time as a reset to play harder and better, which he did right from the drop of the puck. It was the first 5v5 goal of his career, second 5v5 point of the season since an assist on 11/3 vs TOR. Nice to see him make a little bit of progress.
Now, perhaps we’ll see if that path is repeated with McGroarty in the future as a scratch for a young player whose effectiveness declined as his stint in the lineup went along.
There’s a lot of data and research on hand to indicate when a goalie has to play two days in a row that it isn’t a pretty picture on that second day. Coach Dean Evason and Columbus don’t have time for that, or any reasonable option at this point but to go with Jet Greaves two days in a row considering how poorly their backup is. The gambit somewhat paid off today, even if the Jackets ran out of gas. Greaves made 38 saves on 43 shots, and if he wasn’t very strong, Columbus wouldn’t even have made it to overtime to get one point. It did look like Greaves and the whole CBJ team eventually wore down in the third period, maybe that doesn’t happen if they’re fresh, but then again maybe not. Can only play the hand you’re dealt.
And hey, if this weekend wasn’t classic NHL for you, I don’t know what is. The Pens dominated first-place Detroit yesterday (after beating them on Thursday too). Then today, last-place Columbus looks about 1000 times better than the Red Wings did, requiring a huge effort and last minute goal for Pittsburgh to avoid losing in regulation. That about sums up the parity of the league these days, you play a team in the middle of a hot stretch (Columbus had won four out of five entering the day) and it doesn’t matter what spot in the standings they’re in. Catch a top team at what happens to be a good time* and you can probably defeat them, possibly while looking very good in the process. (*Note: this probably doesn’t apply to Colorado this season, but that’s about it)
The future is uncertain, volume 659: one week ago Danton Heinen was in Wilkes-Barre, today he played against his now former Penguin teammates in Columbus. Always crazy how quickly life situations can change for a great majority of the league at the drop of a hat.
Was thinking yesterday about making a note for Rakell’s six shot on goal day against Detroit, but he only scored an empty net goal. Rakell had another five SOGs today (and nine total attempts) and scored a late third period goal of much more significance today. Not a bad weekend for him to be sitting on four goals for the season and bumping that up to six over the course of about 29 hours. Bryan Rust can use the help for as a winger finding the back of the net on that line.
Chinakhov’s play on the GWG might be overlooked, it worked out perfectly. Most players in that situation slow-play the puck to the point of tedium and pull back to make sure the change has happened and the setup is right to proceed. Chinakhov was aggressive to go up the ice. Nothing ventured, nothing gained when it comes to 3v3 OT, glad to see an instance where players don’t sit back and watch paint dry and force the issue. That could have backfired if Karlsson wasn’t prepared to receive the pass and build on it with one of his own.
That caps off a very satisfying and exciting weekend of Penguin hockey, in two very different games. Pittsburgh now gets a three-day break that they can use in the big scheme of things, but with the way they’re going now it’s almost a shame the momentum will be put on hold for a few days until the next game on Thursday.
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