Penguins fall in shootout
overtime to Guentzel that just missed.
• Kevin Fiala and Filip Forsberg beat rookie Tristan Jarry in the shootout, but the kid acquitted himself just fine, especially in a rough second-period-sequence.
Jarry ventured a zip code out of his net to challenge a shooter and wound up taking a penalty. Nashville scored 3 seconds into the power play.
The Predators scored 16 seconds into another. But Jarry held strong, allowing the Penguins to push back.
“He doesn’t get rattled,” Sullivan said of Jarry. “He made some big stops in the third period.”
Much like the Penguins offense — which we’ll get to — if Jarry replicates this performance, they’ll be just fine. As it stands, the Penguins dropped to 9-7-3 overall, 4-7-2 on the road and 0-4-2 on the second night of back-to-backs.
Furthermore, they took six penalties and allowed the Predators those two powerplay goals. The good news is that the flaws are correctable; it’s mostly a bunch of stick infractions.
They could have prevented Kyle Turris’ goal with tighter defensive coverage, and the penalty-kill has been a sore spot on the second night of back-to-backs; it’s just 14 for 23 (60.9 percent) over the past five in that situation.
Sidney Crosby also did not score. That makes 11 games in a row, the secondlongest slump of his career and one game away from tying his worst. But he did attempt seven shots and put five on goal.
“Sid was great [Saturday],” Malkin said.
Bryan Rust was another player who earned high marks and provided some optimism that maybe he’s out of his goal-scoring funk.
Rust picked up the first short-handed goal of his career in the first period and enjoyed several offensive chances.
The Penguins had a 68-62 edge in attempted shots and drove possession for much of the three-on-three overtime. They scored three times in five-on-five play for the first time since Oct. 17.
Overall, the Penguins came into this one stone cold offensively, having scored more than three goals exactly zero times since that Rangers game. Different mindset Saturday. And nearly different results.
“We know it’s back-toback games, but we dominated in the third period,” Malkin said. “We scored two goals to get back in it. We played hard in overtime. We spent all five minutes in the offensive zone. We deserved two points.”
The key part of what resonated with many Penguins was another R word — resilience. Too many times in these situations — the second night of back-to-backs, on the road — the Penguins had none. They had it in spades againstthe Predators.
They even got goals from key sources: Rust, Kessel, Guentzel and Dumoulin — depth, two top-six goals and one from an unlikely source.
It was a recipe that played out in the playoffs, in this building, and it’s one that the Penguins know works. Consider that after any of the other losses in this same scenario, Sullivan wasn’t talking about resilience.
“I liked our resilience,” Sullivan said. “If we got down, we just kept playing. We kept playing hard. We kept trying tomake the right plays, pay attention to the details. We found ways to get back in the game.If we play hard like that, and we execute the way we did tonight, I think we’re going to win a lot of games.”