Facing a fierce defence, Pens make shots count
Club overcomes woeful second period to claim first win in the Stanley Cup final
They don’t ask how. They don’t even ask how many. All they ask is the score.
Maybe that’s the way the Pittsburgh Penguins should look at their 5-3 win against the Nashville Predators in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final.
This one wasn’t pretty. After taking a 3-0 lead in the first period, the Penguins went 36 minutes and 43 seconds without a shot on net. With 3:17 remaining in the third period, Jake Guentzel scored the winner on just their seventh shot of the game.
Opportunistic does not begin to describe it. Pittsburgh scored five goals on 12 shots. The Penguins had played nearly two periods in such a defensive shell that Predators goalie Pekka Rinne could have been reading a book or watching TV back in the dressing room.
Maybe that was why he was beaten by Guentzel’s shot. Going nearly two periods without seeing any rubber would make any goalie go cold. Still, it was a bullet, and it was long overdue.
That it was Guentzel scoring the winner seemed fitting. The forward, who leads the playoffs with 10 goals, had been stuck in an eight-game scoring drought, having gone the entire third round without one. His stick had gone so cold lately there was talk whether he would be a healthy scratch.
But Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan had faith in the rookie winger.
“I think Jake’s game has been really good,” Sullivan said. “He’s a very good player. I think he helps us win even on nights when he doesn’t score because he has a complete skill set. He’s pretty sound defensively. He has awareness away from the puck. He’s a playmaker. He has a high hockey IQ. He’s a competitive guy.
“There’s a lot of aspects of his game other than just his ability to score goals that help our team win.”
Though the game could not have ended better for Pittsburgh, things could not have started better for Nashville.
Seven minutes in, P.K. Subban took a pass in the slot from Filip Forsberg and beat goalie Matt Murray with a wrist shot. The celebration was short-lived, however, as a coach’s challenge revealed that Forsberg had been offside earlier on the play.
If the Predators had played with confidence leading up to that goal, having it disallowed had the opposite effect.
Nashville looked rattled. Moments later, Calle Jarnkrok and James Neal combined to take penalties, giving Pittsburgh a five-on-three. With the twoman advantage, Evgeni Malkin continued to make a case for the Conn Smythe Trophy by blasting a slapshot through Rinne’s glove.
A minute later, Chris Kunitz set up Conor Sheary with a no-look pass to make it 2-0. It didn’t stop there. With 17 seconds remaining in the period, Rinne tried to poke-check a Nick Bonino pass out of harm’s way, only to have it bounce in off defenceman Mattias Ekholm’s leg.
Just like that, the Predators went from being up 1-0 to going down 3-0 after the Penguins scored three goals in four minutes and 11 seconds.
It wasn’t as dominant an effort as the score made it seem. Pittsburgh, which had scored three times on eight shots in the first period, had no shots in the entire second period and just four in the third. A team with Malkin, Sidney Crosby and Phil Kessel could not put a single puck on net for over 30 minutes. It was what an Ottawa Senators fan might call boring hockey, and it cost them.
Shortly after a fan threw a catfish onto the ice — a tradition at home games in Nashville — the Predators scored a power-play goal when Ryan Ellis one-timed a pass from Subban.
The following period, with Penguins still in their defensive shell and unable to get the puck on net, the Predators made it a one-goal game when Colton Sissons redirected a shot from Roman Josi.
Then it got downright embarrassing. Nashville’s Subban took a delay-of-game penalty for shooting the puck over the glass, giving Pittsburgh a power play. Surely, they would get a shot. But no — another two minutes went by without as much as a puck in the crease. And just as the period expired, Austin Watson beat two Penguins to a clearing attempt and then found Frederick Gaudreau in front for the tying goal.
It looked like the Predators, who had been a team that mounted so many late-game comebacks, were going to do it again. Instead, Pittsburgh’s first shot on net in the period was a good one, as Guentzel beat Rinne with a wrist shot.
Two minutes later, with Rinne pulled for an extra attacker, Pittsburgh found the net again. By then, no one was looking at the shot counter.