Penguins play with some feistiness vs. Columbus

actually, before Kris Letang scored the decisive shootout goal.

Ryan Reaves helped liven up the place early. He pulverized Markus Hannikainen with a clean hit, then answered the bell when Lukas Sedlak came calling. Sedlak is not a small man, at 6 feet, 207 pounds, but he was fighting way out of his weight class on this one. Reaves dropped him on three punches. Sedlak did not return.

Torts on that encounter: “I think [Sedlak] is dumb to do it, but high marks for doing it.”

Reaves is expected to fight. Malkin and Sidney Crosby are not, but that is precisely what they did late in the second period with the Penguins trailing 1-0.

Malkin went first, engaging in a little 71-on-71 violence with Mike Foligno at 19:31. He took the worst of it, but the arena got loud. As the horn sounded, Crosby engaged with 6-foot-4 defensemen Seth Jones.

“It’s cool to see such important players putting their bodies on the line to get us going,” said goalie Matt Murray. “It definitely worked.”

It’s not something Sullivan wants to see often — Malkin and Crosby throwing punches — but on this night, with a gigantic two points on the table? He loved it.

“When the game got a little nasty there at the end of the period, it brought a lot of juice to the bench,” he said.

Patric Hornqvist tied it early in the third, and Malkin put the Penguins ahead at 15:03 only to see the Blue Jackets tie it after the Penguins had too many men on the ice.

Malkin’s goal came after Columbus was whistled for a rarely called double infraction in the faceoff circle.

Tortorella seemed to hate the rule more than the call.

“It’s frustrating that we don’t let the guys who are supposed to put on the show put on the show,” he said.

The Penguins put on one of their best shows of the season. They won puck battles all over the ice. They outshot the Blue Jackets, 41- 32. They outhit them, 33-29. They went to the net with abandon (always a sign of a focused Penguins team).

Now the trick is to bring that kind of passion consistently — and it shouldn’t be a problem next Wednesday. Why? Because Columbus is coming back.