Pregame

The Penguins get Harrison Brunicke back in the lineup, Matt Dumba goes out. Also out for the game is Justin Brazeau (undisclosed upper body injury, day-to-day), which gets Philip Tomasino back in the action. Arturs Silovs takes his turn in net.

First period

Ugly start for the Penguins, Gabriel Vilardi finds himself come open down by the net and makes a tricky play to bank the puck off Silovs and into the net. Surprise goal 15 seconds into the game comes almost out of no where.

Winnipeg keeps the pressure up and scores a second goal soon after from right in front of the net. Brunicke gets bulled through by Parker Ford and then Brad Lambert is able to avoid Brunicke tying up his stick and scores his first career NHL goal.

Soon after, Sidney Crosby is in the penalty box. The Pens’ PK has been solid lately and keeps this one from getting way out of hand early with a successful kill.

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Pittsburgh stabilizes through the rest of the period, getting another big PK stop when Evgeni Malkin takes a penalty. The Pens get a few shots and some isolated bursts against Jets goalie Eric Comrie but don’t solve him in the opening frame.

Second period

The second starts the way most of the first went, Winnipeg scores early. Slick play by Jonathan Toews to pull up and make a great pass that turns into an easy finish for Vladislav Namestnikov to score his sixth goal of the season. 3-0 Jets.

The Pens get a power play but it doesn’t change their fortunes. Silovs, whose job is to tend the goal, comes out of it and holds the puck along the wall. Then he panics and fires a pass straight into the wall ahead of him and it’s downhill from there, Kyle Connor ends up in between Silovs and the empty net, so the Pens’ erstwhile goaltender throws his stick to prevent the goal.

That’s a penalty shot, which Connor makes short work of Silovs on the backhand deke to extend the lead to 4-0 Winnipeg.

Pittsburgh gets a power play and their first goal of the game. It’s one of the more painful one of Sidney Crosby’s career, scored off an Erik Karlsson slapshot that flies into Crosby and then bounces into the net. Always hurts a little less when it goes in the net. 4-1.

Well, at least it won’t be a shutout.

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Third period

Winnipeg starts the period springing Connor on a breakaway, Silovs is there to deny him.

The Pens score with 9:33 to play, great effort by Blake Lizotte to drive to the net. Goalie Comrie accidentally used his stick to knock it in. 4-2.

Pittsburgh pulls Silovs for an extra attacker, doesn’t work. Connor scores to set the final score at 5-2.

Some thoughts

Dan Muse’s starting lineups are fun — this time Manitoba natives Connor Dewar and Owen Pickering got the nod today, but the drawback is that the Jets got their first line out there against Pittsburgh’s third pair defense. That resulted in the puck in the Pens’ net in 15 seconds. We’ll see if Muse keeps mixing up his starting combos with players that usually don’t play together or in that situation, especially on the road where the other team can exploit matchups.

Brunicke has been a scratch in four of the last five games and at this point he’s played like a guy who was only getting his second game in the last 11 days. The power Ford put on Brunicke in the first period was troubling in the sense that’s about the first time he hasn’t looked physically ready to handle an NHL opponent. Today was Game No. 8 for Brunicke, he can still be returned to junior and having his contract slide another year. At this point that’s becoming a more apparent solution to let Brunicke go dominate, play a huge role, go to World Juniors and join up with Wilkes-Barre when his junior year ends.

Silovs was trying to help but got out of his element in the second period. It was already a 3-0 score and his team was barely able to show signs of life, so what’s the difference at that point. At least that didn’t happen as a momentum-turner in a close game. But I was also thinking out of those first two early goals, Pittsburgh was getting saves on those types of shots in the first few weeks of the season. Maybe that doesn’t last forever and those goals are going to eventually start to get through— only one team had above a .907% all situations save% last season and the Pens entered today with a .921% mark — which made the start of the game feel like some regression in real time.

Besides that, gotta tip your cap to the Jets, they had a great game. There’s a reason they won the Presidents Trophy last season and have started this season with a 9-3 record; they’re a great team that’s capable of making an opponent endure a long day. Today, unfortunately, the Pens were that opponent. I don’t think the Pens even managed many 3v3 or 2v2 rushes, let alone any odd man rushes. Winnipeg was great at closing off the walls and also not allowing anything up the middle at the same time. Impressive stuff.

Where have you gone, Justin Brazeau? The big guy’s absence was noticeable, fortunately it was declared at only day-to-day and hopefully won’t be that major.

The Pens changed up lines to chase goals in the third period, so of course ironically the only goal they got came from the fourth line that remained unchanged. Malkin jumped up with Crosby-Rust, Novak bumped over to the middle with Mantha-Tomasino which left Kindel to center Koivunen-Hallander. Not much came of it, but always nice to see the coaches go back to Crosby-Malkin for as much as possible. Neither of the top lines had much going on, between the players like Tomasino and Hallander that are just kind of there and the more star players not getting much going. This was a game the Pens started to miss Rickard Rakell and Brazeau for how those absences end up impacting the rest of the roster.

It’s been a long road trip for the Pens, and it’s not over yet. The team heads to Toronto for a Monday night game against the Maple Leafs and then they’ll finally get to return home.