The start of the game is delayed a half hour due to a major traffic backup on I-279 that caught some of the players from getting to the arena. Once they get in, it’s the same lineup as last game besides Triatn Jarry in net tonight.
The visiting Canadiens are coming into town with this lineup, featuring top prospect Jacob Fowler making his NHL debut.
The delayed start was a sign of bad things to come for the Pens. The second line gets caught out on a long shift for their first one of the night. Kris Letang ices the puck, the shift times are getting past two minutes. Letang gets the puck back and instead of risking another icing he goes laterally across the rink, and that’s a bad idea. Alex Texier picks it off and then makes an absolutely perfect shot that hits the inside of where the post meets the crossbar. 1-0 early.
Pittsburgh doesn’t get a shot on goal by the time of the first commercial break. Well, they would have but Sidney Crosby caught a teammate’s shot with the top of his foot. Not much padding there, Crosby labors to the bench slowly but is able to make it back for his next shift.
Justin Brazeau draws the first penalty of the game, doesn’t amount to much for Pittsburgh. Brazeau returns the favor to Montreal a few minutes later by going the penalty box for the Canadiens’ first power play of the game. The Pens kill it off. They also survive the last few seconds of the period when Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki get a couple chances in quick succession just before the horn, Tristan Jarry has an answer for them.
Shots are 8-4 MTL through 20. The Pens aren’t doing much better than when they were sitting in traffic from a few hours earlier.
There’s no big response from the Pens to start the second, Montreal still looking quicker and getting to pucks first. The Habs put another on the board on a rush, Pittsburgh has numbers back but a cross-ice pass gives some room for Brendan Gallagher to fire in his second of the season. 2-0.
Pittsburgh does earn another power play when Noah Dobson slashes Rutger McGroarty, not much comes of it.
Montreal gets their second power play when Ville Koivunen trips a guy and their puck and player movement pays off. Cole Caufield slings a puck in with his feet standing below the goal line. That kind of night. 3-0.
The Pens are awarded another power play, this time they get some quick shots from Ben Kindel and Erik Karlsson on the follow up. Still no goal, though the off ice officials blow the horn to take a look at a Crosby shot that comes close to sneaking inside the post and Fowler’s leg. Not enough to call it.
Montreal keeps going, Owen Beck appears to notch his first career goal on a shot expertly placed over the pad and under the glove before Jarry can drop to get it. 4-0 game with 3:39 to play. Dan Muse uses his timeout, none of the coaches even bother saying anything to the players as they decide to challenge the play for offsides. It’s close for Josh Anderson who is ruled to be ahead of the play. No goal after all, Muse and the video team help the players take one off the board, back to 3-0.
Pittsburgh tries to make the most of it, Anthony Mantha gets a breakaway from the blueline in, can’t score. McGroarty is in free, hits the post.
Woulda been nice to get on the board at the end when creating a little bit of momentum for the first time all night after the goal reversal, but it’s a woulda/coulda/shoulda type of 40 minutes so far. 3-0 Montreal up heading into the second intermission.
There is a good opening statement for the Pens, though it would be quickly answered. The first line for Pittsburgh has a great shift, Crosby gets a primary assist with a pretty little back pass to set the angle better for Bryan Rust to smack in his ninth goal of the season under Fowler’s glove. 3-1 game, 45 seconds into the third.
It only took 15 seconds for Montreal to answer. Juraj Slafkovsky flies down the ice and passes across for Oliver Kapanen to one-time in. Back to a three-goal lead at 4-1, 19:00 to play.
Pittsburgh gets a power play, Crosby and Rust keep working magic but Fowler holds them at bay. Alex Carrier punches Kindel after the whistle, the refs call it and Pittsburgh gets 25 seconds of 5v3 time. Doesn’t work out well.
Jarry makes a big stop on Nick Suzuki all alone in front, a little later McGroarty draws another penalty. There’s 5:10 left but Muse pulls Jarry anyways for an extra attacker. Might as well! Erik Karlsson strikes with a long-distance wrister. 4-2 game, 4:50 to go.
Pittsburgh is quick to pull Jarry again for an extra attacker when they can. The big guns all keep working their magic for what they can, at one point Crosby shoots to an open net when Fowler loses his bearings but somehow Lane Hutson reaches with his arm and blocks it away. Letang has to take a hooking penalty with 18 seconds left to prevent a rush.
That’s it for it, Fowler holds on to earn his first win in his first game, the Pens fall in regulation for the first time since November 29th.
Really tough last two regulation shift segment for Letang combining his ‘efforts’ on the 0.1 second goal against Anaheim and the opening faceoff tonight. He didn’t want to ice the puck and everyone else was tired and not giving any outlets, though that doesn’t excuse throwing the puck right through the middle where it absolutely can’t go. Given the situation with defending and being trapped for two minutes the sequence was building up for somebody, somewhere to make a mistake andBoy, Jacob Fowler must have been thinking this whole NHL thing isn’t so hard based on the limited amount of pressure and quality chances that he faced in the first 20 or 30 minutes tonight. It heated up by the end, the Pens have a lot to regret about the rare slow start for themselves.The Bob Grove stat of the night is that the Pens fall to 1-4-3 in the last eight games that Evgeni Malkin has missed.A game like this is why the missed points from blown leads lately can leave a lasting scar. Some nights there isn’t much in the tank. Pittsburgh has been scoring first in games frequently and their streak of first period goals in general was broken tonight. They haven’t been chasing many games this season like that and ran out of time at the end once they finally had their legs going. Even then, any thoughts or hopes for a comeback were quickly extinguished by giving up a goal just seconds after Rust got Pittsburgh on the board.There was a lot of talk last game when Anaheim’s Jackson Lacombe lifted a shot right by the ear of Arturs Silovs when he was in the ‘reverse horizontal’ technique, where a goalie drops to the side to hug the post. Ironically on Caufield’s goal, Jarry was staying up and not playing that technique, and Caufield simply fired a shot off Jarry’s skate and into the net. Jarry didn’t have much time to drop into it due to the quick puck movement by Montreal, just found it funny (but not in the ha-ha way) that goalies making the decisions to use or use that ended up resulting in goals in consecutive games in pretty visible examples.In the ‘McGroarty’s getting close file’: rang a shot off the post, drew two power plays tonight to go along with three shots on goal. Positive signs there, Ben Kindel was buzzing around and making good things happen too with six shots on goal. The third member of the line, Ville Koivunen, well, he played. Only one shot attempt and he took a penalty that Montreal converted into a PPG, not a banner night for him.Starting to officially sour on Anthony Mantha working with the top power play. It’s not necessarily him so much as it how he tends ends up where Malkin plays near the left point, not a good spot for a player with his skill set. Put Brazeau out there in front of the net, put Tommy Novak with his point streak and hot play with Crosby-Rust out there. Anything would be better than how it’s working with Mantha. 1 for 6 power play tonight, scoring only once late in the game while losing by three. The group is just 2 for 13 since Malkin has been out (although the one goal was Mantha’s last game out…)And since the typical formula for winning efforts for Pittsburgh this year tends to revolve around power play + goaltending, neither element was there. Touched upon the brutal night for the power play above (against Montreal’s 26th ranked PK, no less), didn’t think Jarry was costly bad — the team wasn’t competitive enough in the first 40 minutes anyways — but he certainly wasn’t sharp on plays like Caufield’s shot and Beck’s disallowed goal was one the goalie would have wanted to keep out of the net on his own without going to the video review.Well, it could be worse if Crosby’s foot was immediately injured. Big dodge there for an injury, the last thing the team needed was another puck strike type of injury to a star player. Crosby staying in the game and making a great setup on Rust’s goal moves No. 87 to within four points of Mario Lemieux’s career total in perhaps the only bright spot of the game.
Next up, San Jose on Saturday as the Pens will look to break out of this 0-1-2 stretch and get back into the win category at home.