• Who: Penguins vs. Blue Jackets
• What: NHL preseason, Game 4
• When: 7:08 p.m.
• Where: PPG Paints Arena
• Goaltenders: Marc-Andre Fleury and Sergei Murashov vs. Elvis Merzlikins
• TV: SportsNet Pittsburgh, NHL Network (national)
• Stream: SNP360
• Radio: Penguins Radio Network
• Boxscore: NHL.com
• Media notes: Penguins | Blue Jackets

► FOLLOW ALONG

• Fleury confirmed that the plan at the end was supposed to be to get him a shot at the empty net but the puck just didn’t come to him.

• Fleury had to catch himself in his postgame interview, talking about the former teammates and moments he’d think about “once he’s done.” Realized that he is done, and corrected himself.

• First star: Marc-Andre Fleury.

• Round 3:
Evgeni Malkin misses
Luca Del Bel Belluz scores. Blue Jackets take the shootout. 

• Normally the scratches go downstairs late in the third, all the prospects are still in the press box and on their feet.

• Round 2:
Sidney Crosby is stopped
Cole Sillinger is stopped by Marc-Andre Fleury.

• Penguins shoot first. Round 1:
Kris Letang misses high
Yegor Chinakhov is stopped by Marc-Andre Fleury.

• Onto a pre-planned bonus shootout.

• Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang made a beeline to Marc-Andre Fleury at the buzzer. Rest of the team let them have a few moments together before joining.

• Final. Penguins win, 4-1. Goals from Sidney Crosby, Rickard Rakell (2), Ville Koivunen. Marc-Andre Fleury stopped eight of eight.

• Final minute.

• “THANK YOU FLEU-RY!” chants with two minutes to go.

• GOAL: Rickard Rakell, empty net. Blue Jackets putting Elvis Merzlikins back in, now down three with 2:28 left. Boooooooooooooo. Penguins 4, Blue Jackets 1

• Whole team now drawing up a play talking to Marc-Andre Fleury. 

• TV timeout. Columbus net still empty. Kris Letang and Marc-Andre Fleury deep in conversation.

• Blue Jackets’ net is empty. 

• Four minutes left. Getting near you-know-what territory.

• Bryan Rust is out of the box.

• “ONE MORE YEAR!” once again.

• Good guy Tristan Broz draws an interference penalty 14 seconds into the kill to negate the Columbus power play. It’ll be 4-on-4 for 1:46.

• Penguins to the PK with 6:24 left. Bryan Rust for slashing. Soft call. If you didn’t read my Ryan Graves story yesterday where I asked him about his three penalties in two games, he talked about how just across the board, penalties are up in this preseason, and he’s not wrong.

• Totally different team this period. Way more aggressive. They want to win for him. 

• Fans are chanting “GOALIE FIGHT!” now. Fleury can’t get tossed before Blue Jackets pull the goalie. Relax.

• Very nice donation from Elvis Merzlikins into the Marc-Andre Fleury ENG fund. 

• GOAL: There’s the two-goal cushion they need. Elvis Merzlikins goes to play the puck behind his net, passes it right to Ville Koivunen in front. Koivunen backhands it into the empty net. Penguins 3, Blue Jackets 1

• Make that eight saves through seven minutes.

• Still such a wild sight:

• Five saves in five minutes for Marc-Andre Fleury. Some big ones, too. And this guy hasn’t been training, other than a couple of skates with injured Wild players the last couple weeks? 

• More “ONE MORE YEAR!” chants.

• Glove save Marc-Andre Fleury with a little windmill for flair … and the place goes wild again.

• Blue Jackets get their first shot of the period just over two minutes in … saved by MArc-Andre Fleury. Crowd gets loud.

• Not even a minute in and “ONE MORE YEAR!” chants break out.

• Third period gets underway to “FLEU-RY! FLEU-RY!” chants. He’s in goal.

• Ben Kindel is skating as a wing today but is taking draws on faceoffs with the second unit, he’s 3-0. He was exceptional in faceoffs last game he played. Against NHL centers. That’s usually one of the hard things to adjust to for a young guy breaking in as a center. Not him. 

• Sidney Crosby is 12-5 in faceoffs. He might just make this team out of camp.

• With that, Sergei Murashov’s night comes to an end. He stopped 12 of 13, the goal he let in wasn’t a bad one to give up in the slightest. Only thing you could have hoped for was more shots for him to keep doing what he does.

• End of the second. Penguins lead 2-1 off goals from Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell. Shots are 26-13 Penguins.

• GOAL: Rickard Rakell gives the Penguins a lead with 1.6 seconds left in the second. Puck hit Sidney Crosby, bounced behind Elvis Merzlikins, and Rickard Rakell swept it in. Penguins 2, Blue Jackets 1

• Penguins get a power play with 50.6 left in the second.

• Elvis Merzlikins kicks another Anthony Mantha attempt wide. He’s up to six actual shots now, not counting the handful of misses he’s had. He’s been noticeable.

• Ben Kindel again turns on the jets, races in for a shot, keeps with it and digs at Elvis Merzlikins for a loose puck, drawing a bit of ire from the Blue Jackets after. He’s done exactly that a few times now this preseason. He’s on the smaller side and needs to put on muscle, but he’s not scared.

• If I had a nickel for every Latvian goalie I’ve watched in this building this weekend I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.

• Anthony Mantha gets a shot and puts it on net this time, Elvis Merzlikins makes the save. Progress.

• Yegor Chinakhov just had a partial breakaway, Ben Kindel turns on the jets and keeps up with him and prevents him from getting a great shot off. Wrote about this a handful of times now but Kindel can skate. That was an NHL player just there he was chasing down.

• Hey, another Blue Jackets shot. Don’t see that too often. Sergei Murashov is awake and gloves it down.

• Cool to see Sergei Murashov and Marc-Andre Fleury speak during TV timeouts. Real “passing of the torch” vibes today.

• Someone asked in my Live Qs yesterday if the preseason gets me ready for the “real games” in any way too, and to add to my response: It’s for getting into my head stuff like No. 16 is Justin Brazeau and not the reappearance of Jason Zucker. Whenever there are new guys with new numbers, there’s a split second where a weird past association comes into mind. 

• First look at the second unit: Kris Letang, Ben Kindel, Ville Koivunen, Anthony Mantha, Justin Brazeau.

• Robbery from Elvis Merzlikins on a Rickard Rakell blast.

• Same top unit starts as the last brief power play.

• Penguins getting another power play with 8:26 left. Anthony Mantha was hooked on that shot attempt.

• Anthony Mantha again with a scoring chance that goes high.

• Not a ton of action for Sergei Murashov this period either, he’s still just faced 11 shots total. Kind of the story for a lot of the preseason so far, they’re doing well enough defensively that the goaltenders don’t get the best opportunity to show much.

• If you missed it this morning, Marc-Andre Fleury said that playing the third period was his idea. The Penguins gave him the option to start or finish, and he wanted the opportunity to win a game (and possibly score). Just energy-wise, he made a great call. The anticipation here is crazy, it might be more wild than had he just started.

• Need to run up the score another two or three goals over the next 30 minutes or so so they have a small cushion late. If you get where I’m going with this.

• GOAL: Sidney Crosby, who else? Carries the puck in and just clicks it over Elvis Merzlikins’ pad before Merzlikins even knew what happened. Avery Hayes sprung him on that. Penguins 1, Blue Jackets 1

• Ben Kindel looks like an NHL player. 

• Anthony Mantha with back-to-back scoring chances that just miss.

• Sidney Crosby’s parents are here for this, by the way.

• Back to full strength. Evgeni Malkin is free.

• Brief 27-second penalty kill now.

• Evgeni Malkin takes a tripping penalty 27 seconds into the man advantage, so there goes that. It’ll be 4-on-4 for 1:33.

• Top unit: Erik Karlsson, Sidney Crosby, Rickard Rakell, Bryan Rust, EvgeniMalkin.

• Penguins get a power play with 19:39 left in the second. Kris Letang is hooked.

• Second period is underway.

• Marc-Andre Fleury held the door for every guy going down the tunnel and gave each a pat. Taking his backup goalie job very seriously these two periods.

• End of the first, Penguins trail 1-0. Shots were 9-8 Penguins that period. Fine period.

• GOAL: Blue Jackets score first. Lucz Del Bel Belluz off a two-on-one, gets the redirect right in front. Not much Sergei Murashov could have done there, he did a good job taking away whatever space he could. If he draws any closer to Del Bel Belluz, then Yegor Chinakhov just puts it in instead of passing. Blue Jackets 1, Penguins 0

• Penguins kill the penalty. Were in their own end for much of it but Sergei Murashov stopped both shots.

• Penguins to the PK with 11:11 left in the first. Caleb Jones gets two for high-sticking.

• Awesome shot:

PENGUINS

• Took almost seven minutes but the Blue Jackets get their first shot. Sergei Murashov makes the save (and then another one), drawing applause from Marc-Andre Fleury on the bench.

• Marc-Andre Fleury’s wife Vero and their three kids are front row, right next to their dad sitting in the tunnel. 

• Six minutes in and the Penguins have the game’s only three shots on goal.

• This is underway.

• When Sergei Murashov was announced as the starter in the pregame video after warmups, a couple of morons booed. When they did the full-on player introductions before anthems he got loud applause.

• Penguins are starting Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Bryan Rust all at forward, wow. Marc-Andre Fleury joins them on the blue line for anthems. Caleb Jones-Parker Wotherspoon start on D.

• The place is packed before the anthems, and “FLEU-RY” chants start when he comes onto the bench.

• The Core Four came back out onto the ice at the end of warmups to take a picture together and the place went crazy again.

• Good amount of kids in the stands with posters saying Marc-Andre Fleury is why they play goalie.

• Penguins’ lines and pairings, slightly different than this morning because a few guys took the option. But Filip Hallander is indeed the forward scratch, they aren’t making him play two games in two nights:

Avery Hayes – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust
Anthony Mantha – Evgeni Malkin – Justin Brazeau
Ville Koivunen – Rickard Rakell – Ben Kindel
Boko Imama – Tristan Broz – Rafael Harvey-Pinard

Parker Wotherspoon – Erik Karlsson
Caleb Jones – Kris Letang
Owen Pickering – Harrison Brunicke

• You can see Marc-Andre Fleury’s massive smile through his mask during this.

• Rickard Rakell, Erik Karlsson, Filip Hallander are all on the ice after not taking the optional morning skate this morning. Hallander skated with the non-game group, not sure if that means he’s the scratch or if they just wanted to let him sleep in after he played last night. Rakell and Karlsson just took the option.

• They’re cutting to Marc-Andre Fleury every other player or so on the videoboard and the crowd erupts each time.

• Here’s Marc-Andre Fleury coming out for warmups:

         

• Last four out the tunnel for warmups: Marc-Andre Fleury, Kris Letang, Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby.

• Regardless of the score, the Penguins and Blue Jackets will end the game with a shootout. Marc-Andre Fleury will remain in net.