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Bryan Rust celebrates his first-period goal with teammates today at Little Caesars Arena.
The Penguins didn’t excel in just one specific area en route to a rather convincing 4-1 win over the first-place Red Wings this afternoon at Little Caesars Arena.
In what could be considered one of their most complete performances of this NHL season, the Penguins took advantage of their scoring opportunities when they got them and played a stout brand of defense to limit the Red Wings to just 12 shots on goal — the fewest allowed by a Penguins team in a road game since 1969 — securing their fourth consecutive win coming out of the Christmas break.
“I think the last three games, I would say, were pretty close to a 60-minute (performance),” Kris Letang said. “The last game, there were a lot of PKs, so it was tough to get everybody in, but I think overall, as a team, we played really well. The Carolina game was pretty good, too, so I think we’re going toward the positive side, and we’re learning from different things we didn’t do as well earlier in the year.”
At times this season, the Penguins haven’t always been locked in on the defensive end of the ice. Things were different today. After taking a 1-0 lead on a Bryan Rust goal less than four minutes into the game and adding another on a Yegor Chinakhov breakaway goal in the final minutes of the first period, there wasn’t a passive approach with the lead.
There was an urgency to add to it, but they were also very aggressive on the defensive end over the final two periods. Sure, Alex DeBrincat did bring the Red Wings within one goal when he scored on this two-on-one in the final five minutes of the second period …
… but there wasn’t much else the home team could muster. They were outshot, 31-12, and had just four high-danger chances. The Penguins didn’t just coast to the win; they worked to earn it on both ends of the ice. That hadn’t always happened prior to this recent four-game stretch in which they’ve climbed back into the thick of the Eastern Conference race, now seventh and trailing the first-place Lightning by just six points.
“Over the course of the year, that’s what you want to see. You want to keep getting better,” Dan Muse said. “Things are going to come up during the course of the year. Credit to the guys. They worked on ‘em. They applied things. Just the way we played the third period as a whole was much better. It wasn’t sitting back. We played the game. We played hard at both ends. When it came to late-game situations, I thought guys did an excellent job in terms of the overall execution.”
Because of some lackluster defensive play, there have been times this season when Penguins goaltenders were left out to dry. With Stuart Skinner between the pipes on this particular day, the protection in front was so impressive that Skinner needed to make just 11 saves, the least amount he’s finished with in a win this season.
“It was incredible,” Skinner said of the defensive effort. “I’m not sure the number of blocked shots, but I would imagine it was high. Any time you get 12 shots in a game against a really good team like that, that’s very impressive by the guys that played in front of me. It tells you how well we played defensively. We didn’t give them anything all night. Made my night really easy. All the credit to the guys in front of me.”
As a whole, Muse was pleased with the complete performance the Penguins put forth to extend a winning streak that includes back-to-back wins over the Red Wings and another victory over a first-place team in Carolina.
Muse said he liked the way they were able to stack shifts in the first period and, when things didn’t go their way, they didn’t let the bad stretches linger. Defenders maneuvered into passing lanes to block shots and made a conscious effort to keep shots to the outside. Then, when there were opportunities to put the puck in the back of the net, Rust and Chinakhov capitalized before Rickard Rakell and Connor Dewar added empty-netters late to seal the victory.
“It was a good game, it was a fast game. It was a really fast game. We’re happy with that,” Muse said. “It’s another step. We talked about that coming out of the break. Kind of a reset. From each day trying to work to continue to build our game. Credit to the guys in terms of going out there and doing that.”