Pens win like team possessed
Game 2 burst chases Rinne and challenges analytics
For so long the Pittsburgh Penguins have spent the Stanley Cup final hanging on, leaning back on the ropes, as George Plimpton once wrote of the rope-a-dope, like a man leaning out his window trying to see something on his roof. It’s not that they don’t throw punches; it’s not that they don’t have knockout power. That, above everything, they have.
But through two games of this series the Nashville Predators have been better than the Penguins in so many areas, from puck battles to mobility to puck movement, and through two games their goaltender has collapsed, followed by everything else. There have been times in this series where it was almost impossible to imagine Pittsburgh threading four wins together, on this narrow of a tightrope. Well, after a 4-1 win Wednesday night, they have two. It has been, for Nashville, a remarkable collapse.
Maybe you could have seen it coming, but it wasn’t easy. Through two periods of Game 2 Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin didn’t have a shot on goal, and the Predators were controlling 64.7 per cent of the shot attempts at five-on-five, and the shots Pittsburgh did get were distant, helpless.
Matt Murray was keeping them in the game because the second-year goaltender is as steady as they come, and big besides. It was 1-1 because Nashvile’s Pontus Aberg scored a beauty, and Jake Guentzel scored through Pekka Rinne. Unlike George Foreman, Nashville doesn’t seem to get tired.
But they have a weakness, and then came the knockout punches, one after another. Crosby won the third-period faceoff, Nashville’s Roman Josi lost a puck battle at centre ice, and Bryan Rust’s shot from the wing came off Rinne’s pad like it was a pinball flipper; Guentzel, who scored the winner in Game 1 and Pittsburgh’s first in this game, buried it. Three minutes later, Pittsburgh got a two-on-one and Phil Kessel’s pass to Scott Wilson went off Wilson’s stick, and off Nashville fourthliner Vern Fiddler’s hoof: 3-1.
Just 15 seconds later Malkin beat a pinching Colton Sissons along the wall and roofed a wrist shot at the other end, and Rinne was done. The 34-year-old Finn entered the final with a .941 save percentage through three rounds, and has allowed eight goals on 36 shots. You switch goalies, and the Predators might be on the way to a sweep.
But that’s not how it works, and it is an extreme version of the pattern this Pittsburgh team has repeated all playoffs long. With No. 1 defenceman Kris Letang gone midway through the season, they finished 14th in shots for and against at five-on-five; going into Game 2, Pittsburgh had the second-lowest percentage of five-on-five shot attempts of any team in the playoffs at 46.9 per cent, which in the regular season would make them the 29th-ranked team in hockey, and then it got worse.
Bad or even average possession teams so rarely win the Cup now.
Boston was 14th in 2011 with one of the great goaltending performances in history; Pittsburgh, in 2009, was 19th with Crosby and Malkin. Every other champ since 2008 has been top four.
So you talk to the Penguins, and they sound like Kessel’s 2013 Leafs, who finished last in puck possession and reached the playoffs in that 48-game season.
“Yeah, I think . . . when teams start peppering us, we do a really good job of keeping the shots to the outside, and we limit the quality scoring chances,” said winger Bryan Rust.
“I don’t know, we just find ways to win, whether we’re leading late in a game, whether we’re trailing, whether we’re up a bunch, down a bunch, I think we play the same way. We try to get wins,” said centre Nick Bonino, who took a shot off the ankle from P.K. Subban in the first period and somehow came back, likely full of enough painkiller . “I think it’s deceiving, puck possession. We looked at it, and we had more time in their zone than they did in ours last game: we just couldn’t get pucks to the net.”
“I think (analytics) serves a purpose,” said Crosby. “I don’t know if it tells the whole story.” It doesn’t. This game was worse than their NHL Cup final-record 12 shot Game 1, and they blew Nashville’s doors off anyway. After a night of hilariously missed calls and increasingly chippy play, Subban and Malkin fought in the third. Or at least, hugged angrily. Eh.
But this isn’t Columbus, which was the victim of a gentleman’s sweep despite outshooting Pittsburgh; this isn’t Washington, which eventually succumbed to its own internal demons in Game 7; it’s not Ottawa, which Pittsburgh solved as the series went on.
The Predators have a dominant defensive corps and forecheck effec- tively, and even without their injured No. 1 centre they are the superior team in most ways. Just not enough for that to count.
So we’re heading to Nashville now, and the Predators have to play now with the knowledge that if the Penguins get a chance there’s suddenly a hell of a chance it’s going to go in. The Penguins have leaned on the ropes, dodged the punches, and knocked the Predators flat. Now we see whether they can get off the mat.