Penguins/Utah Recap: Sidney Crosby’s OT goal ends the Pens’ losing streak

The Pens make a third period comeback to extend the game to overtime, and then the captain takes over

Pregame

Three losses in a row entering tonight helps bring a couple of changes for the Penguins:

• Ryan Shea is bounced to healthy scratch territory, P.O. Joseph is back in the game
• Jesse Puljujarvi returns from AHL banishment for his first NHL game since January 12th, Philip Tomasino sits
• Blake Lizotte returns from illness, pushing Matt Nieto out of the lineup
• And for the fifth time in seven games since Tristan Jarry got demoted, it’s Alex Nedeljkovic getting the starting nod in goal
• Other than the first line, all the forwards get shaken up in alignment from last game too, featuring Kevin Hayes getting two new wingers and moving up to the second line

The home Hockey Club is going with these lines.

First period

The Pens start with a good scoring chance but Bryan Rust’s pass back to Sidney Crosby got broken up.

A few minutes in, the first “staged fight” of the season (and quite a while longer) for Pittsburgh with Boko Imama and Liam O’Brien dropping the gloves on their first shift for no reason besides having a tilt. Not much to it, O’Brien connects with two glancing blows and Imama slings him down.

Back and forth action, Lizotte takes the game’s first minor penalty with 6:33 to play. Utah gets a lot of zone time and works the pass back to Mikhail Sergachev to wrist a shot from the top of the circles over the glove of Nedeljkovic. 1-0 Utah, 5:09 to go.

Utah builds on the goal, they can see another one coming. Nedeljkovic falls down awkwardly and nearly gives up another but keeps the puck out.

Pens in hold on move now, Rust doesn’t skate to the line and ices the puck with 33 seconds left. Another close call later, they manage to survive the period being only down a goal.

Shots go 12-4 Utah in the first, the Pens only managed one shot in the last 17+ minutes of the period which, as you can imagine, isn’t gonna work out well.

Second period

Pittsburgh plays a little better to start the period and earns their first power play. The second group starts and in an odd turn of events keeps zone time for the opening 1:30 of the power play so they stay out there, but it’s mostly consumed with Cody Glass and Kris Letang playing the puck to one another on the perimeter and nothing comes of it.

The power play expires but the Pens keep pushing and get their first goal. Sidney Crosby passes back to Marcus Pettersson and his big slap shot tips off a Utah player and jumps into the net. Lucky bounce but sometimes good breaks happen when shooting the puck. 1-1.

But, of course, being the Penguins they give up a goal soon after. Utah hangs on after more pressure and John Marino flips the puck ahead for Michael Carcone on a breakaway. Nedeljkovic stops the first shot but isn’t able to keep the follow-up shot out of the net as it flutters over him. 2-1 Utah back in front.

Karlsson turns the puck over in his own end and Logan puts the “Cool” into Cooley by batting a shot out of mid-air. Got a lot of power into it too, luckily Nedeljkovic stays in front of the puck to avoid getting put on future highlight reels.

Pittsburgh flips the script from the first period with a healthy advantage in shots (15-7 in the middle frame) but, per usual, one coverage slip leads to them playing even in the period’s scoring and they still trail heading into the final frame.

Third period

A turnover involving Erik Karlsson and a goal…But it’s the Penguins on the good side of it. Karlsson collects an errant pass and fires a shot over Connor Ingram from a wide angle. Not stellar goaltending but the Pens can’t ask questions like that at this point and gladly take Karlsson’s fifth marker of the season to tie the game at 2 with 13:43 to play.

The two teams trade some chances, the Pens are stronger after the goal but then Utah makes a push. No one scores so this game is going to take extra time to find a winner.

Overtime

Crosby, Rust and Letang start. They win possession but lose it just 30 seconds later without doing much with it. That’s almost the ender but Nedeljkovic stops the puck on the Utah shot.

Cody Glass loses the ensuing faceoff and it takes a while for the Pens to regain the puck. When they do Hayes holds the puck for a long ass time and doesn’t do much besides skate around. Utah finally gets it back from him.

The Pens get it back soon after, Rakell does his Hayes impression and skates around aimlessly for a while, until Crosby jumps off the bench. Glass won’t attack the net and pulls up, leaving a drop pass for the captain. Sid definitely will attack the net and drives in on his backhand, lifting a puck up and over Ingram to break Pittsburgh’s losing streak.

Some thoughts

• Nothing to do with tonight’s game itself but Utah was in the news for announcing their three finalist team names. The preferred front runner (Yeti/Yetis) has been nixed due to copyright issues with the popular drinkware company of the same moniker. “Utah Hockey Club” is a choice but no name at all, here’s to hoping it will be Mammoth or Wasatch. The latter being a reference to a nearby mountain range and could “allow the team to use a ‘mythical snow creature in the form of a Yeti’” in the logo so maybe that’s the compromise for being a quasi-Yeti without infringing on the existing copyright. Could take some getting used to, but the team is expected to keep the black and blue color scheme on any choice.
• The nationally televised aspect of the game meant the “9:30” advertised start actually had opening faceoff at 9:52pm in order to pad enough time for TNT’s first game of the night at 7:00pm to wrap up. You can’t see me right now but I still have two thumbs enthusiastically down even hours or days later. (At least the opening game on TNT featured the Flyers losing 5-0).
• Pettersson’s goal was Pittsburgh’s first from a blueliner not named Erik Karlsson since December 17th (and Karlsson only has two in that span). Overall tonight saw the second and third Pittsburgh defenseman goal in the month of January, with Karlsson’s prior goal coming on January 5th before he too found the back of the net tonight. Can’t go three+ weeks in this league with no input there and have it go well (and, surprise, it hasn’t been a good past few weeks!) The defensemen have chipped in some assists and gotten some shots tipped but them not finding any goals at all helped to turn the shooting percentage back against the team in the last month.
• But it’s not the defensemen’s primary job to produce goals and the forwards are barely faring any better. In the past six games (where the Pens are somehow 2-4-0), Crosby has seven points. The team has only 12 total goals, meaning the rest of the team has only managed to score five total goals that Crosby has not factored into. It’s even more dire lately — over the last four games, there has only been two goals that Crosby hasn’t been a part of (a Michael Bunting power play tally against Anaheim, a long drought ended by Karlsson’s goal in the third period tonight).
• To go deeper, the Pens didn’t generate a ES goal that didn’t include Crosby from way back on Jan. 20th (Cody Glass doing the honors against the Kings) through Karlsson’s goal in the third period. That’s an astounding lack of depth and complete absence of support for the offense to totally dry up from the forwards, with a correlation in timing to when Evgeni Malkin departed almost three games ago (getting hurt at the start of the Seattle game). Absolutely no one has been able to pick up the slack, and as a result winning games isn’t a realistic possibility when the rest of the forwards produce so little offense (and zip, zero of it anytime No. 87 isn’t on the ice).
• Keep the last sentence in mind for the Bob Grove tweet of the night that tells us the Pens have been trailing after two periods in 5 of their last 6 GP. They lost the first four in regulation before finding a way to pull out an OT win tonight.
• Per the TNT broadcast, this makes the 43rd different venue where Crosby has scored a goal in. He’s also up to 23 career OT goals.
• The Pens end their road trip at 3-4-0, and considering the illnesses and injuries along the way to Rust (albeit a quick one) and Malkin, that’s a minor accomplishment in that. The sting of losing to the three non-playoff teams they lost to (ANA, SEA, SJ) sting and show the limitations this team has, but a game tonight where they hung in there at the end of a long trip and gutted out a win at least puts a nice stamp on things and should lift spirits for the long flight back home.

Luckily the Pens get to go home for a bit, this is a tired team that could badly use it. They’re not done with Western Conference foes quite yet, the Nashville Predators come to town for the next game on Saturday night.