Pens/Red Wings Recap: Pittsburgh gets on track, wins in Detroit

The Penguins earn their first win of the 2024-25 season tonight by beating the Red Wings 6-3

Pregame

Another game, another NHL debut. Goalie Joel Blomqvist gets into his first career game, otherwise the Penguins line up as they finished the last two periods last night.

The Red Wings celebrate their first game of the season by presenting this lineup of their own.

First period

Much like last night, Pittsburgh falls behind in the first few minutes. And much like last night, another Detroit strikes 3:46 in when Lucas Raymond made a great cross-ice pass for Alex Debrincat to load up and shoot past Blomqvist.

Lars Eller gets called for a high-sticking and the Pens make a crucial kill. Cody Glass did well to lift a stick and Blomqvist made his first really quality save of his career to rob a goal.

Blomqvist does well to make a big stop on Vladimir Tarasenko and the Pens finally score a goal. Sidney Crosby sets up Anthony Beauvillier. Beauvillier whiffs but keeps his composure enough to get a second chance and banked a shot off goalie Ville Husso. Then Ben Chiarot either failed to keep the bouncing puck out or outright directly put it over the line. No points for style, but that’s the last thing that mattered at that point to get a badly needed goal for the visitors.

Kris Letang gets called for a weak hooking call off a faceoff and Detroit is back to their second power play of the period, but they again can’t score.

Shots are 14-7 Red Wings in the first. The rookie goalie did a lot of heavy lifting to keep the Pens in this game early.

Second period

The Pens start cookin’ by scoring three goals in the first 5:28 of the period to jump out to a big lead and chase Husso out of the game.

Beauvillier scored his second goal in a cleaner fashion, going to the net and smacking in a juicy rebound that Husso left out. 2-1.

Next up was some Evgeni Malkin magic, cutting through the offensive zone and around several Red Wings and then leaving a pass over for Drew O’Connor to slam home from in front to extend the lead to 3-1.

The next goal looked like pure bad goaltending. Husso came up empty on a soft, fluttering Marcus Pettersson point shot. Crosby might have deflected it, and even if not, his presence and Moritz Seider cutting across the goalie’s field of vision didn’t help matters. At this point it’s 4-1 and Detroit makes the change in net to Cam Talbot.

Cody Glass got his stick up on Chiarot, the Pens kill off the penalty portion but just a few seconds later Tarasenko wires a shot in. 4-2 game.

The Pens appeared to get a quick answer just over a minute later. Nice work by the second line down low eventually sees Michael Bunting pass the puck over to O’Connor who settled it down and fired his second goal of the game in. But Detroit challenged for O’Connor using his hand on the puck earlier and that wiped the score back to 4-2.

That’s it for the second, Pittsburgh in fairly firm control of this one after 40 minutes.

Third period

Detroit’s Simon Edvinsson makes a rookie mistake by taking a retaliation penalty early on, and the Pens’ power play strikes for their first power play goal of the season. Lots of snappy puck movement and eventually Erik Karlsson whips a shot in. Milestone goal, Malkin records his second assist on the night to get to No. 800 in his career. And it extends the lead to 5-2.

Soon after that, the Pens get into penalty trouble. Letang goes back to the box on a slashing call and then while killing that Noel Acciari got his stick up into the face of a Detroit player. That gave the Red Wings 1:36 of 5v3 time. The Pens try to hold them back, but eventually the numbers overwhelm Blomqvist and the PK. DeBrincat snaps in his second goal of the night. 5-3 game with 11:47 left to go.

Pittsburgh’s able to settle in. The fourth line nearly scores when a Karlsson breakout pass leads Acciari to a good look in front that he narrowly can’t convert on. That line sticks to it on the forecheck and Kevin Hayes pops a nice shot up and in to extend the lead back to 6-3 with 7:39 remaining.

That wrapped this one up, the Pens skated away with their first win of the season and Joel Blomqvist starts his NHL career with a victory.

Some thoughts

• You really have to credit Joel Blomqvist for this one. The Pens were not sharp early, to put it mildly. Last night Tristan Jarry gave up two goals on the first three shots he saw (and three overall in the first) and the game was out of reach early. Blomqvist didn’t have much a chance on a blistering Debrincat one timer but then he settled in and kept the puck out with several amazing saves. That’s winning hockey there to keep a team in the game until they find their legs.
• And boy, did the Penguins find a gear after that. It helps that Husso was, well, not exactly lights out. At this point the Pens needed some breaks and they had to work to create them.
• A normal PKer in Glass was in the box, which meant Lars Eller and Kevin Hayes took a turn together killing, which led up to Detroit’s second goal. Don’t like that combo one bit.
• An evident yet obvious statement: important for the power play to strike tonight. Only had two cracks at it and converted in the third. Big in the scheme of the game to pad the lead but for the confidence of the group they get a reward for the tweaks that they’ve made to move the puck.
• It was nice to see Beauvillier score twice, and O’Connor hit the back of the net twice as well (though only one goal counted since one was disallowed). Support wingers are going to be critical. The chances that Pittsburgh wins when they get a goal from players like that are going to go way up. Make it multiple (let alone three!) and it’s sky high.
• After being shutout last night it was something of a get right game for the big guys too. Crosby and Malkin generated two assists a piece. Karlsson went 1G+1A, just like the unstoppable offensive force of his partner Marcus Pettersson.
• We warned in the preview about the Red Wings’ top line. Wasn’t a difficult call but still a pertinent one, they combined for 2G+4A on this night. Fortunately for the Penguins, early returns on Detroit’s defense and goaltending situation was not sharp coming out of the gates. If Detroit wants to return to the playoffs they’re going to have to improve a lot in those departments.

Game two ended up a lot better for Pittsburgh than the opening night shutout loss. The Pens pick up their first win of the year, and now enjoy an off day tomorrow as they move over to Toronto and their next game on Saturday night.