Murray hurt in collision
Tuesday.
“That’s always sad when you see your starting goalie go down like that,” Hornqvist said. “You don’t know what happened, just one of those odd plays where one guy tried to go to the net and he falls into our goalie. It’s no one’s fault, but it’s just sad and a little scary.”
Any sort of prolonged absence for Murray would offset just about any positive vibes coming from the win, but, in the small picture, his injury also seemed to be a turning point of sorts for the Penguins, who up until that point had allowed the Flyers to “carry the play basically the whole [second] period,” according to Crosby.
Tristan Jarry came in for Murray and immediately made some big saves to keep the deficit at just 2-1. Even though he eventually gave up a goal to Sean Couturier in the final 30 seconds of the period to make the score 3-1 heading into the third, Rust said those early saves from Jarry didn’t go unnoticed on the Penguins’ bench.
“That’s huge, because I think it can be a little demoralizing when you see your goalie get hurt — anyone get hurt — and I think he stepped in there, was a rock for us the rest of the game,” Rust said. “I think that confidence kind of went from our defense out, and I think we responded.”
They sure did. Hornqvist and Rust scored in the first two minutes of the third, and the score was tied.
“We didn’t have our best second period and then Jars came in and played great for us, made some big, key saves,” Hornqvist said. “Then, we took over the game in the third and played our best period of the year so far. We just have to do that more often.”
Even the dominant third period tested the Penguins’ resiliency. Michael Raffl scored at 16:19 of the third to put the Flyers back ahead, but Jake Guentzel answered with his second goal of the game at 18:56 to force the overtime.
“We had been playing so well in the third,” Rust said. “We knew that if we just kept going then we were going to find another one. I don’t think anyone got rattled on the bench. I think it was just like, ‘Well, all right, let’s go get another one.’”
They did, and then Crosby ended it with his 10th goal of the season, a deflection off a Kris Letang pass at 1:48 of the extra session. It’s no coincidence, Crosby noted, that all four Penguins goals in the third period and overtime came from within just a few feet of the goal.
“It’s no secret, that’s where they’re going to be,” Crosby said. “We’ve got to continue to go there.”
Sullivan called the game “a microcosm of [the Penguins’] season,” which is both a good and bad thing.
“We came out in the second period and didn’t play the game the right way, gave up a number of scoring chances,” Sullivan said. “Then we come out in the third period and we were the team that I think was playing Penguins hockey, that was playing the type of identity that this team is built on.”