Devils get past Penguins
Jesper Bratt scores in overtime to lift New Jersey over Pittsburgh
Jesper Bratt scored on a wraparound at 2:50 of overtime and the New Jersey Devils beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 2-1 on Sunday.
Bratt took a pass from Pavel Zacha and quickly circled the net, tucking a shot between the post and the skate of Penguins goaltender Tristan Jarry for his first career overtime gamewinner.
“(Jarry) was kind of covering everything for me to shoot at, and I didn’t want to force a bad-angle shot, so I just tried to wrap it,” Bratt said. “I saw he kind of got caught with one of his legs that he couldn’t push through to the other side and I saw my chance to wrap around quick.”
The Devils won for the third time in four games. They won for the second time in three games against Pittsburgh since Sunday’s game was the third consecutive meeting between the teams. The Devils had three wins in their previous 13 games before Sunday.
Bratt scored his second of the season and continued a four-game point streak, while Sami Vatanen also scored his second of the season for New Jersey. Mackenzie Blackwood stopped 35 shots for the Devils. He played his first game since aggravating an upper-body injury during warmups on Thursday.
“Mackenzie came up huge for us and had some big saves,” Bratt said. “I think we played harder as a group. We wanted to compete and we wanted to win.”
Sidney Crosby scored his 12th of the season for Pittsburgh. The Penguins lost for the third time in four games, following a six-game win streak. Jarry made 33 saves for Pittsburgh.
“We generated some decent changes, but we couldn’t capitalize,” Crosby said. “It was a close game and in overtime anything can happen. We had our looks and we didn’t put them in.”
Crosby opened the scoring at 3:37 of the first period. He was near the goal line when he took a cross-ice pass from Jake Guentzel and snuck a shot between Blackwood’s outstretched skate and the post.
“It was disappointing to have that first goal go in, but I thought our response was really good,” Devils coach Lindy Ruff said. “We stuck with it and we got rewarded by the end of the game.”
Vatanen tied the game at 4:48 of the second period. The Devils swarmed the Pittsburgh net following a power play and Vatanen converted when his slap shot beat Jarry to the glove side. Vatanen, who is one point from 200 in the NHL, has points in three of his past four games.
The Devils played their sixth of 11 back-to-back sets on Sunday. They are winless in the first six games (0-6-0), but improved to 3-2-1 in the second game following Sunday’s overtime win.
“It felt like, overall, the whole game, as a team, we had a good game,” Bratt said. “It was a good bounce-back for us from (Saturday’s) game, and to end it like this with an overtime win was great.”
Lightning 5, Panthers 3: Tyler Johnson broke a tie on a power play midway through the third period to help Tampa Bay beat Florida. Yanni Gourde and Brayden Point each had a goal and an assist, Alex Killorn and Mathieu Joseph also scored, and Curtis Mcelhinney stopped 29 shots to improve to 3-3 1. The Lightning opened a fourpoint lead over Florida in the Central Division standings. Patric Hornqvist, Carter Verhaeghe and Gustav Forsling scored for Florida, Aleksander Barkov had two assists, and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 19 shots. Johnson drove down to tap in pass from Gourde to make it 4-3. Point added an empty-netter with 14.3 seconds left.
Kings 3, Golden Knights 1: Sean Walker and Dustin Brown scored 51 seconds apart in the second period and Los Angeles ended Vegas’ winning streak at five. Cal Petersen made 41 saves and fell just short of his second career shutout to help the Kings avenged a 4-2 loss to the Knights on Friday night. Tomas Nosek scored for the first-place Golden Knights to end Petersen’s shutout bid with 3:27 to play, but Jeff Carter scored a breakaway goal 55 seconds later to seal it.