STOCKHOLM — Trouble might be brewing for the Penguins.

They’re banged up, their hot start has started to evaporate, and in their last two games, they haven’t played well.

They were really bad in this one.

The Penguins somehow earned a point — and came within about a minute of earning two — but the Nashville Predators tied the game with their goaltender pulled and won it 2-1 in overtime on a Steven Stamkos snipe.

YES SIR STAMMER 😤 pic.twitter.com/Tiiba3yw9B

— Nashville Predators (@PredsNHL) November 14, 2025

Filip Forsberg evened the game with the goaltender pulled a few moments early. Sidney Crosby pulled the draw back, but only Forsberg was there. Bryan Rust and Ryan Shea were flatfooted for just an instant, which was all it took for the native of Sweden to even the contest.

FILIP FORSBERG TIES THE GAME IN SWEDEN 🇸🇪

COULDN’T HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BETTER 🔥 pic.twitter.com/VSouMRUGhR

— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) November 14, 2025

“The puck was bouncing around,” Rust explained. “I tried to go stick on stick. He shot the puck off my stick.”

The Penguins are now 1-3-2 in their past six game, a stretch that started with them blowing a 3-0, third-period lead in Toronto. Since then, they’ve struggled badly while attempting to protect leads and while they haven’t been a disaster, they haven’t looked like the team that stunned the NHL in October with its precise, impressive play.

“I just didn’t think we were sharp,” Rust said, dismissing the suggestion that they looked flat against the Predators. “We missed some plays that we didn’t see, or were late to see. We just weren’t nearly sharp enough and as a result we were on our heels a lot.”

After an evenly played but dull first period, the Penguins took the lead in the second when Malkin shot a puck from behind the net that found its way past Juuse Saros.

MALKAMANIA IN STOCKHOLM! 💪 pic.twitter.com/pUQzN2gMh1

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) November 14, 2025

The irony of this was that the Penguins were steamrolled all period by the Predators, getting outshot 12-2 in the second.

Only the brilliance of Artūrs Šilovs kept the Penguins in the lead.

Šilovs stopped 28 of 30 shots, including two breakaways. He’s been horrible in shootouts, allowing seven of eight goals this season, which was one of the reasons that prompted coach Dan Muse to focus on shootouts at length during a Tuesday practice in Stockholm.

The plan worked.

“He was awesome all game,” Erik Karlsson said.

That much is undeniable.

So, too, was the fact that the Penguins were anything but awesome.

Muse wasn’t thrilled with what he saw. The coach said that, in some of the recent losses, he thought the Penguins actually played well. The game in New Jersey last weekend is a good example.

“I don’t think that was the case tonight,” he said. “We were off on detail. We were off on execution.”

The Penguins will get a chance to claim a win and three out of four possible points when the Penguins and Predators play again in Stockholm at 9 a.m. ET on Sunday.

Ten postgame observations 

• The game-tying goal was rather sudden and bizarre.

Crosby won the draw — well, he won the draw back, anyway — and a space in front of the net was vacated. As best I can tell, Shea was the guilty party.

One way or the other, it was not a well-executed sequence of events from the Penguins. Making matters worse, a timeout had just been called by Nashville, which gave the Penguins plenty of time to prepare for all possibilities.

Not a good moment in what was generally a very poor performance.

• I found it curious that Malkin was on the ice for that situation.

While his defensive work has been notably better this season, and while he had nothing to do with the goal being scored, it’s simply not a situation where you’d expect to see him on the ice.

Muse is, in my view, among the primary reasons for the Penguins’ terrific start to the season, so I’m hardly questioning him in this instance. But you wouldn’t have seen Mike Sullivan put Malkin on the ice in that situation in a million years.

• Speaking of people who were on the ice in that situation, it was another really brutal game for Kris Letang.

He was responsible for a breakaway against in the first period, took a bad penalty in the first period, and was simply out of sorts most of the evening.

I can’t really fault Muse for having Letang on the ice in that situation, however. It’s either Karlsson, who isn’t great in his own zone by his very nature, or a member of the third pairing on the ice in that situation. It would have been Matt Dumba on this night.

There are no easy answers in that situation.

Still, Letang is not putting together a quality season and he had another bad game in this one.

• I wasn’t a huge fan of the Kevin Hayes line with Philip Tomasino and Ville Koivunen before the game.

I’m still not.

Hayes, for one, plays the game at a much slower pace than the others.

Tomasino has struggled all season and was invisible against his former team. Koivunen, for reasons that remain unclear, hasn’t been close to the player who showed so many flashes in April last season.

It’s just not a good line and I’d expect it to be broken up next game. Hayes had one shot on goal. Neither Koivunen nor Tomasino registered a shot.

• Šilovs was simply brilliant all game. I can’t blame him for the game-tying goal, especially when considering Rust’s admission that it went off his stick.

Stamkos, while not the player he once was, isn’t going to be stopped very often from that spot. He’s one of the great goal scorers of all time.

Šilovs is making a bid to be the Penguins’ No. 1 goaltender this season, regardless of when Tristan Jarry gets healthy and regardless of how well Sergei Murashov may play.

His save percentage is now .917. That number speaks for itself.

• Rust said the Penguins weren’t sharp but balked at my suggestion that they were flat.

Fair enough. He’s as honest as it gets.

But from my vantage point, they didn’t have much energy in this game. We’ve seen this team struggle a lot during the past few seasons when they’ve had long stretches off before games. I think there might be something to that.

• Ben Kindel has been very quiet during his past two games. I don’t think he’s looked right since Brandt Clarke planted his face into the boards against the Kings last Sunday.

He’ll be fine, but like the rest of his team, he looked a step off against the Predators.

• The Penguins entered the game with the NHL’s best power play, so I’ll hardly bash that unit. But I’ll say this: It looked really, really sluggish in practice the day before. And in two opportunities in this game, it didn’t register a shot.

No need to panic. But it wasn’t good at all in this game. The Penguins have been reliant on the power play all season and it wasn’t around to help in this one.

• I loved watching Karlsson in this game. You know he wanted to put on a show in his homeland. He made a few brilliant passes in this game.

On each occasion, the crowd politely applauded, like when a golfer stuffs a wedge within a foot of the hole. It was fun to observe it all.

• High marks to the good people of Sweden. What a wonderful hockey atmosphere.

The fans filled the building more than an hour in advance, their excitement for the game very real. Wonderful setting for a game.

Hopefully Sunday’s game will be a bit more entertaining. This one was a dud, especially for the Penguins.