Wasted scoring chances doomed Penguins
The Penguins started the postseason Saturday night with more playoff experience than any of the 24 teams in the NHL’s coronavirus-delayed postseason tournament, a combined 1,208 games.
They’re going to need every bit of to survive the allegedly overmatched Montreal Canadiens in their best-of-five qualifying round series.
Game 1 Saturday night turned out to be a nightmare for the Penguins in a 3-2 overtime loss. Stanley Cup history says if you lose Game 1 of a best-of-five series, you lose the series 81.9 percent of the time.
Montreal’s Jeff Petry won the game with a wrist shot through traffic at 13:57 of overtime, but that’s not when the Penguins lost it.
They lost it early when they fired shot after shot at Montreal goaltender Carey Price and couldn’t score. The Canadiens took a 1-0 lead on a lucky deflection goal by Jesperi Kotkaniemi and a 2-0 lead on a shot by Nick Suzuki that Matt Murray should have stopped. At that point, we
should have known the Penguins were in trouble. In the long history of Penguins-Canadiens, the team that went up by two goals at any point in a game was 11-0, according to Penguins historian Bob Grove.
The Penguins also lost in the third period after goals by Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust had tied the game, 2-2. They wasted glorious scoring chances with the game 2-2. They managed just one shot on a 5-on3 power play that lasted 1:32. They cringed when Conor Sheary failed to score on a penalty shot with 3:03 left in regulation when Sheary didn’t even get the shot on net. They also failed to score on the power play in overtime, making them 1-for-7 in the game with just 10 shots.
All of that gave the Canadiens the chance to steal the game on Petry’s goal.
Murray deserved better than to lose his seventh consecutive playoff start. He was brilliant after giving up the Suzuki goal. He stopped Jonathan Drouin on a breakaway in overtime and then held his ground when Drouin couldn’t get off a shot on goal on the ensuing penalty shot.
There was much debate which Penguins goaltender should start Game 1 – Murray, who owns two Cup rings, or Tristan Jarry, who had a better regular season.
Mike Sullivan picked the right man even if the result turned out all wrong.