TAMPA, Fla. — In the most peculiar game of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ season, they overcame themselves and an inspired performance from the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday.

A phone call from Toronto didn’t hurt.

The NHL overturned Nikita Kucherov’s late, game-tying goal because of what was deemed an illegal hand pass and the Penguins hung on for dear life in a 4-3 victory.

The Lightning’s last minute tying goal got taken back for a hand pass that was rimmed off the boards and hit a glove 😬 pic.twitter.com/HFHKcO7TY9

— Spittin’ Chiclets (@spittinchiclets) December 5, 2025

Tristan Jarry stopped 37 of 40 shots in a spectacular performance that saw his Penguins teammates overwhelmed for large portions of the evening by Kucherov in particular and the Lightning in general.

The Penguins took a 3-0 lead after Jarry saved them consistently in the opening 20 minutes. Evgeni Malkin scored twice, including the game-winner late in the third period. Ben Kindel also scored, while Ville Koivunen started the scoring by notching his first NHL goal.

“Not our best,” Koivunen said. “Jars saved us.”

Erik Karlsson put things a bit more bluntly: “That was a (expletive) crazy game.”

The Penguins gave up on odd-man rushes early and often and never looked equipped to handle the Lightning attack.

“He honestly kept us in it,” coach Dan Muse said of Jarry. “We have to clean up some areas. Just too much. Some of those are preventable.”

Muse will take the win, but knows the Penguins can’t play like that again in Dallas on Sunday if they want to finish off a perfect road trip.

“Points are hard to come by,” he said. “You take the points. But you also have to be honest about things. We can’t be giving up that many chances.”

Ten postgame observations 

• Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper was so irate about the hand-pass ruling that I wanted to include a verbatim account of his response. Cooper is never boring and was at his defiant best with this answer:

Here is Jon Cooper after the game about the hand pass.

Called it “laughable” the game-tying goal was overturned.

Brutal stuff from the NHL. pic.twitter.com/sBrYYMmgHj

— Evan Closky (@ECloskyWTSP) December 5, 2025

“There’s a couple things: OK, did he mean to do it, or was it deflected? Was there an advantage gained or not? And you could really debate whether an advantage was gained. Did Brandon Hagel direct that puck knowing exactly where it was going? No. Would you sit here today and say Brandon Hagel was maybe protecting his face from a puck hitting it, or protecting some part of his body? If I threw this microphone at you right now, would you put your hand up to stop it? Hell yeah, you would. All right, so there’s a spirit of the rule. Was that the spirit of the rule for him, take it in the face? If that, okay, let’s let me do that. And I think that’s where we get that wrong, and that’s not what happened. And he didn’t direct any pucks. That was a bang-bang play. There were tons of guys around. It turned out we got it first. A lot of play, a lot of the game developed after that, and the puck went in the net.

“So is that a really frustrating one for me? It is. I think you read the rule book, which we did, and then you try and dissect what happened in the play, and then you take it all into consideration. It’s laughable that that got overturned, but in the end, it did, so can’t cry over that. Bottom line is, we should never put it in that situation anyway. So that’s our bad that we got to that situation.

“But I think in the spirit of the rule, come on, that’s a goal all day. Things happen on the ice. The game is fast. Refs get most of it right. None of them thought it was a hand pass. There’s four of them. So it’s the evils of video replay. Now there’s eyes on everything and camera angles, and now it’s judgment calls, and then the judgment of everybody playing the game that was not a hand pass in the judgment of somebody judging in another city that it was deemed to be video, somebody that’s not even in Florida is making that call — that can be a little bit frustrating.”

• As the rulebook is written, was it a hand pass? Yes, it was.

That said, frankly, I fully understand Cooper’s rage. If you’ve watched the NHL for any period of time, you know very well that penalties and infractions constantly take place without being called. How many hand passes are missed? How many plays are ruled offside that actually were not? We could go on and on. So, yes, I can understand the frustration when a particular play is picked away in the final moments of a dramatic game.

That said … it was technically a hand pass.

• It’s easy to say the Penguins played a poor game. When Muse said after the game that there was plenty to clean up, he wasn’t wrong.

I do have to say, however, that I thought the Lightning were simply magnificent most of the game. Their team speed, even without injured stars Brayden Point and Victor Hedman, was off the charts. That’s the fastest team in person I’ve seen all season.

As for Kucherov … that was one of the greatest performances I’ve seen from a player in quite some time. He had a goal, an assist, 10 shots on net and another goal wiped off. In all sincerity, he could have had six or seven points. He was that dominant.

Kucherov was by far the best player on the ice. He looked superhuman at times. The only answer the Penguins had for him came when the clock hit 0:00.

• The Penguins were hideous in the first period. By my count, they allowed five odd-man rushes in the game’s first 10 minutes.

While Tampa Bay’s speed and skill level were somewhat responsible, so too was a very cavalier-looking Penguins team. For the second straight game, Kris Letang was responsible for an odd-man rush against on his first shift. The wonderful top unit of Karlsson and Parker Wotherspoon had its hands full all evening with Kucherov and Jake Guentzel.

Frankly, not many Penguins played well in this game, and even the ones who did took bad penalties or made other careless mistakes.

• Jarry’s performance in the first period was the best 20 minutes a Penguins goaltender has enjoyed all season. Simply sublime.

I can’t give him too hard a time for the goals that did beat him, even if the final two weren’t his best efforts. The Penguins were getting overwhelmed, and it was only a matter of time before he finally cracked a bit. He never cracked completely, though. Jarry has a long, glorious history in this building, and he did it again. He’s some kind of a story at the moment.

• What bothered me more than the Penguins’ performance was the undisciplined penalties from all of their best players.

Malkin was guilty of a horrible offensive-zone trip in the third period. The Penguins killed it off. They had not managed to kill a lazy Letang trip two minutes earlier. All he had to do was skate, but instead chose to trip Guentzel.

Also, while Sidney Crosby had good reason to be furious with referee Wes McCauley, who refused to call J.J. Moser for interference in the first period despite his decision to crawl on Crosby for about 20 seconds, the captain still broke his stick on Moser’s back moments later.

It’s not a good look when all the guys wearing a letter take unnecessary penalties against one of the NHL’s most gifted power plays.

• Malkin’s standout season continued with the game-winning goal at 17:17 of the third period after he scored a beauty on a breakaway earlier in the game. It was one of those great Malkin moments when you knew the puck was going in the moment you saw him on the breakaway. He’s doing some special things right now.

• Ville Koivunen finally scored his first NHL goal. Hopefully, he can relax now and just play. He’s been pressing for weeks.

You could see the relief on his face following the game.

Come for the snipe, stay for the celly 🤩

Congrats, Ville! pic.twitter.com/uTgOAGVcPO

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) December 5, 2025

• One of the few Penguins who did impress me was Ben Kindel.

He scored his seventh goal of the season on a beautiful deflection on the power play. More noticeable, to me, was the 18-year-old’s defensive work. His penalty-killing was outstanding all game. Muse put him on the ice in a defensive posture when Tampa Bay had the goaltender pulled in the final minute. He deserved to be out there.

After a lapse for a few weeks, Kindel is playing high-level hockey again.

• Since I could write 30 observations, a few quick-fire thoughts to end this one.

Boko Imama dropped the gloves early in the game and again brought plenty of energy. Kevin Hayes lost track of Kucherov in the defensive zone, and I think it’s a matter of time until he’s off the top line. His lack of foot speed is just becoming too much of a problem. That’s nine games without a goal for Anthony Mantha, which is too many. I liked Rutger McGroarty’s game again. He’s a better player than he was last season, and his hockey IQ, like Kindel’s, is off the charts. He made a 100-foot bank pass to Crosby in the first period that got my attention.