Tanev scores winner in OT
Fittingly, it comes short-handed for team that truly is
Two of the prettiest goals the Penguins have scored in this young season got them to overtime Wednesday night against the NHL’s last remaining unbeaten team.
One of the ugliest allowed them to escape with two points.
Brandon Tanev, the team’s pesky new role player, scored a shorthanded goal with
1:03 left in overtime to give the Penguins a 3-2 win against the Colorado Avalanche at PPG Paints Arena. Tanev’s shot was going wide but it hit Gabriel Landeskog and trickled over the goal line before the Colorado forward could fish it out.
“I just wanted to get one to the
net there and I was fortunate enough to get a bounce,” Tanev said of his first goal since signing with Pittsburgh in July.
The Penguins have now won four games in a row while improving to 5-2-0.
Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel scored much fancier goals for the Penguins and Matt Murray made 26 saves as Crosby out-dueled Colorado star Nathan MacKinnon, who also hails from Nova Scotia and trains with Crosby during the summer. The two Tim Hortons pitchmen both scored. Crosby’s goal was jaw-dropping.
Crosby and Avalanche defenseman Erik Johnson raced each other for a loose puck in the Colorado zone. It was a tie. After their sticks clashed, the puck ramped into the air. Crosby, without slowing down, plucked it with his left glove, dropped it on the ice then dusted 21-year-old defenseman Samuel Girard with a toe drag.
“I was thinking maybe shoot and then I just tried to hold onto it and wait for something to open up and was able to take it to my backhand,” the captain said.
By then, Johnson was back on his heels, desperately trying to whack the puck off of Crosby’s stick, but we’ve seen this movie before. Crosby waited out Avalanche goalie Philipp Grubauer and whipped a low backhand shot into the rapidly-closing window between his outstretched left pad and the post.
“I just tried to be patient and was able to find some room there,” he said.
That hardly believable effort by Crosby extended his season-opening point streak to seven games. Crosby has four goals among his dozen points.
More important, that goal tied the score at 1-1 late in the first period and gave the Penguins the jolt they needed to eventually defeat the Avalanche.
“We have the privilege of watching him night in and night out and sometimes we marvel at what he does out there. That goal was one of them,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said. “He’s just such a great competitor . ... He’s just a great leader and that type of goal in this time of game gave our bench such a boost.”
Late in the second period, with the game still tied, Crosby’s star linemate scored one that would have been the goal of the game on most other nights.
Guentzel took a short pass from Crosby and cut wide on his backhand around Ryan Graves, another young Avalanche defenseman. It looked like Guentzel was loading up to sling a backhand under the crossbar. Instead, he deftly pulled the puck back inside to his forehand and snapped a shot over Grubauer’s glove.
The winger has scored in four consecutive games and leads the team with five goals.
“He’s tough as nails . ... He took a couple of big hits tonight. He blocked a couple of bombs. He’s just a brave kid. He’s just so competitive. I don’t know how else to describe him,” Sullivan said. “The goal he scored is a goal-scorer’s goal.”
The goals by Crosby and Guentzel will make the highlight shows, at least ones aired north of the border. Tanev’s might wind up on some blooper reels. But just as important to the Penguins winning again was their overall team defense.
The Avalanche, which had scored four goals or more in four of its five games entering Wednesday, netted the game’s first goal 3:16 into the first period.
The Penguins had numbers back at the visitors counterattack but lost track of Matt Calvert as the fourth-line forward charged into the slot. Murray didn’t have much of a chance when Matt Nieto’s pass skittered into Calvert’s wheelhouse.
But after that, the Penguins put the clamps on the Avalanche’s stars
“Defending as a unit of five was the key,” Kris Letang said. “[Our forwards] were able to kind of squeeze the neutral zone and didn’t allow them to come on us with speed. So there’s a lot of pucks that had to be chipped in . ... The fact that they didn’t have control coming into the zone made our job easier.”
It took a bad bounce for the Avalanche to tie it early in the third period.
Crosby won an offensivezone faceoff but the puck jumped over the stick of defenseman Brian Dumoulin at the blue line. That sprung MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen, one of the NHL’s most dangerous duos, on a 2-on-1 rush the other way.
After Rantanen carried the puck into Penguins territory, Letang pressed up on the winger, trying to take away his time in space. But Rantanen found a way to slip the pass under Letang’s stick to MacKinnon, who beat Murray upstairs.
In overtime, Dumoulin went to the box for slashing. The Avalanche sent out three forwards who scored at least 75 points last season in MacKinnon, Rantanen and Landeskog, plus hotshot young defenseman Cale Makar for the 4-on-3.
“What I loved about it was the reaction on the bench when Dumo got the penalty,” Sullivan said. “‘We’re going to kill this penalty then go back at them.’”
And the Penguins’ penalty-killers, led by defenseman Jack Johnson, did their job and Tanev stunned the Avalanche with his fluky goal off Landeskog. He joined Mario Lemieux as the only players in team history to score an overtime goal while short-handed.
“It’s a big win for us,” Tanev said. “We’ve played some great games leading up to this one, and I thought we did a great job, and we want to keep that rolling.”