PHILADELPHIA — Dan Muse is shuffling the deck.
After two disappointing games to open this first-round series with their state rivals — a pair of losses that took the air out of their home barn and cast a shadow over this briefly triumphant post-season return — the Pittsburgh Penguins took the ice in Philadelphia Wednesday morning with a slew of lineup changes.
Up top, the head coach reunited the longtime trio of Rickard Rakell, Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust. Rakell opened the series on the second line with Tommy Novak and Evgeni Malkin, but was moved back to No. 87’s line late in Game 2 as the offence continued to sputter. Replacing him on the second trio with No. 71 is Anthony Mantha, Pittsburgh’s leading goal-scorer during the regular season, who hasn’t yet found his game in this series while playing in the bottom six.
The key change from Muse and Co., though, is the new face on the club’s third line — entering the series in Game 3 (Sportsnet, Sportsnet+ at 7 p.m. ET) is Justin Brazeau, who sat out Games 1 and 2 as a healthy scratch.
The New Liskeard, Ont., product played a consistent role for the Pens’ attack all season — and came up with a career-best 17-goal, 34-point campaign as a result — but lost his spot in the lineup as the Penguins got healthy down the stretch. The return of Blake Lizotte on the fourth line in Game 1 moved Elmer Soderblom — acquired in March to hold things down with Lizotte out — into Brazeau’s former spot on the third line.
But after two games that have seen the Penguins largely unable to break down the Flyers’ defence — culminating in a shutout loss in Game 2 — Brazeau is back.
“I’m just excited to play my game,” he said Wednesday after the Penguins wrapped up their morning skate at Philly’s Xfinity Mobile Arena. “This time of the year is the best time of year to play hockey. I’ve missed the last couple games, but I’m excited to get in.”
The winger skated Wednesday alongside rookie Ben Kindel and Egor Chinakhov, who’s been a revelation since joining the Penguins in December, but has yet to make an impact on this series through two games playing up top with Crosby.
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“All three of us bring a different element,” Brazeau said of the new-look trio. “Obviously in the offensive zone, I want those guys skating around with the puck, and I know where I have to go. So it makes it easy for me to read off them — two guys with a lot of skill, able to shoot the puck.
“I’m just going to try to make it as easy as I can for them.”
Aside from the 28-year-old’s much-needed goal-scoring chops, the addition of his size — Brazeau clocks in at six-foot-six, 232 pounds — figures to be just as pivotal for the Pens.
“What we’re looking for with Braz is just leading with that ability to get in on the forecheck,” Muse said Wednesday. “He’s shown that. Get stops, get to the net. He’s obviously a guy who can do a lot of good things there in terms of puck protection down low. … Those are things that he’s done over the course of this year when he’s at his best.”
“I think that’s a big part of my game,” Brazeau agreed. “When I’m at my best, I’m around that paint. I’m not going to try to do anything crazy, I’m just going to play my game, like I’ve done my whole career, and just try to get there as much as I can.”
Pittsburgh’s fourth line of Lizotte, Noel Acciari and Connor Dewar — which has looked like the Pens’ most effective trio in terms of getting in on the forecheck against Philly — remains unchanged for Game 3, meaning Soderblom will sit. The Penguins ran the same defence pairings on Wednesday morning, too, and Muse confirmed that netminder Stuart Skinner will get the start for the third game in a row.
The Penguins enter Wednesday night’s affair essentially facing a must-win situation. A loss here would set them back 3-0 in this first-round bout, requiring perfection the rest of the way to avoid elimination. Still, the club is trying to keep their mind only on the task at hand.
“It’s always heightened when you’re down in a series,” Sidney Crosby said after Wednesday’s skate wrapped. “You’re trying to get the momentum back. I’ve been up 3-1 in series, I know how quick that can turn. So I think that, regardless of what a series is, it’s just all about trying to play the right way, give yourself a chance every night. We feel like we took a step towards that in Game 2. We’ve got to do that here in Game 3.
“I think you tend to simplify on the road. We’ve been good on the road all year. We understand that we earned being down 2-0, and we’ve got to earn getting ourselves back in.”
Charting a course back to level ground within the cauldron of emotion that will be Xfinity Mobile Arena — under the eyes of a raucous fan base that is certain to make their feelings about these Penguins crystal clear all night — won’t be simple. But the captain is relishing the opportunity to step onto that stage once again.
“It’s always been a rivalry. I think it brings out the best in everyone, both teams, to be honest with you,” Crosby said. “It’s always an intense environment. But you know, as a hockey player, those are the games you want to be in.”
Tocchet on Martone’s sterling start to playoffs: ‘He’s not overwhelmed’
Coming out of the Olympic break, if you’d have told the Flyers faithful they’d be in this position come late April, it would’ve seemed a dream.
Rewind back to February, and Philadelphia sat fourth-last in the East, with four clubs sitting between them and a post-season berth. Two months later, they’re two wins up in Round 1, looking much the better squad through two games. And if there’s one player who best embodies that unexpected emergence, that will to outplay the noise and the doubts and the prognostications, it’s 19-year-old Porter Martone.
Much has already been said of the teenage phenom who’s taken Philly by storm. And yet, it’s difficult to fully encapsulate just how meteoric the Peterborough, Ont., product’s ascent has been. Three-and-a-half weeks ago, Martone had never played a single NHL shift. Now, he’s not only making an impact in the big leagues — he’s arguably been the Flyers’ best player through two games of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“He’s not overwhelmed, you know what I mean?” head coach Rick Tocchet said in the wake of Game 2, after Martone buried his team-leading second goal of the series. “Even that goal … that’s a goal-scorer’s goal. I know people think that maybe it’s easy, but it wasn’t, because he had to scoot, the timing, it’s on his backhand.
“That’s what he does. He’s a hockey player.”
Martone leads his club with seven shots through two games — tied with Crosby for the most of anyone in the series — and is the only player on either squad that’s managed more than one tally so far. He’s already become the youngest Flyer to score in his post-season debut, and is the first teenager in NHL history to score the game-winner in his first two playoff games.
But if his emergence has taken Philly, and the NHL, by surprise, it hasn’t caught the teenager off guard himself.
“I think I made the jump because I thought I was ready,” Martone said after Monday night’s win in Pittsburgh. “And I thought I could come help this team. They did a lot this year — they went through a lot of ups and downs. When I came here, they were really rolling, so I kind of hopped onto a moving train.
“It’s been good ever since. But I think there’s a lot of work still to be done.”
Bettman shares his view on continued goalie interference controversy
The confusion around the league’s handling of goaltender interference has persisted all season long. During the regular season, Sportsnet tracked each instance of goalie interference throughout the campaign to try to pin down how the rulings are handled by the league.
On Monday, while in Pittsburgh to take in Game 2 of the Penguins-Flyers series, commissioner Gary Bettman shared his view on the controversy surrounding the goalie interference process.
“I think the issue comes when people hope that a goal will either be confirmed or overturned. In the final analysis, you shouldn’t be challenging unless the call is clearly, conclusively wrong,” Bettman said Monday. “Sometimes strategically you’ll make the call, to support your goaltender. Sometimes you hope you’ll get the result you want. … When you have a rooting interest, or you are in the moment very either passionate or frustrated, you may challenge a call. But in the final analysis, overwhelmingly they get it right.”
The commissioner said the issue was discussed in depth with the league’s general managers last year, in an effort to provide further clarity on the process.
“We went through an exercise a year ago at the general managers’ meeting where I think we showed 54 examples of what were ‘controversial’ coach’s challenges,” Bettman said. “And the general managers as a group, I think on 48 or 50 of them, agreed the right call had been made, overwhelmingly. And the three or four where there was some disagreement, the room was pretty split.
“So, the rule of thumb should be: unless it’s conclusively wrong, you shouldn’t be challenging it.”
Penguins’ Game 3 Lines:
Rakell-Crosby-Rust
Mantha-Novak-Malkin
Chinakhov-Kindel-Brazeau
Dewar-Lizotte-Acciari
Wotherspoon-Karlsson
Girard-Letang
Shea-Clifton
Foerster-Zegras-Tippett
Konecny-Dvorak-Martone
Barkey-Cates-Michkov
Glendening-Couturier-Hathaway
Sanheim-Ristolainen
York-Drysdale
Seeler-Juulsen