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<\/a><\/p>\nVegas has had a great process to keep shots and chances down, yet they allow a lot of 5v5 goals against due to shoddy goaltending. In the last two games coming out of the break without Sidney Crosby, the Penguins have only scored one 5v5 goal rom a forward (Egor Chinakhov\u2019s goal against New Jersey to go with 5v5 goals from Connor Clifton and Ryan Shea).<\/p>\n
Thus, the script for this game is pretty clear: can the Pens dig deep and find some offense from the players up front? Some have been close; Anthony Mantha scored on the power play yesterday, Bryan Rust has been getting some looks, Ben Kindel, Evgeni Malkin and Tommy Novak each registered six shots on goal yesterday against the Rangers. They\u2019re probably going to need names in that last sentence to punch through at even strength in a game like this.<\/p>\n
Egor Chinakhov – Tommy Novak – Evgeni Malkin<\/p>\n
Avery Hayes – Rickard Rakell – Bryan Rust<\/p>\n
Anthony Mantha – Ben Kindel – Justin Brazeau<\/p>\n
Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Noel Acciari<\/p>\n
Parker Wotherspoon \/ Erik Karlsson<\/p>\n
Ryan Shea \/ Connor Clifton<\/p>\n
Goalies: Arturs Silovs (Stuart Skinner played yesterday)<\/p>\n
Potential Scratches: Kevin Hayes, Ryan Graves, Ilya Solovyov<\/p>\n
IR: Sidney Crosby, Filip Hallander, Jack St. Ivany<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll leave the lines as they have been, though Rakell at center might not be lasting much longer after losing all 10 of his faceoffs yesterday and the team chose to play Malkin and Kindel at center later on in the game yesterday between Rust\/Rakell on the wings. If that full on change happens, the Pens might need a center and crack an opportunity for Kevin Hayes to play his first game since 2\/5 and just his second since 1\/12.Girard was dealing with a minor injury yesterday but able to play. With so many games coming up in the next few weeks that will be worth watching to see if that issue gets put behind him without issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who: Vegas Golden Knights (28-17-14, 70 points, 1st place Pacific Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (30-15-13, 73 points, 2nd…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5113],"tags":[30296,5,4,118,1469,100,5216],"class_list":["post-478854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-game-preview","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-penguins","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-pittsburghpenguins"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116153848169140948","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>Maybe it\u2019s fitting Vegas has six or seven very shiny and great pieces to work with, then the bottom six or seven in their lineup are not that impressive. Lines up well with that town.Goal has been a problem, signing Carter Hart didn\u2019t do much to change their fortunes and Hill\u2019s stats have incrementally been falling away since posting an 11-4 record and .932 save percentage in the 2023 playoffs.There\u2019s been a little bit of an adjustment factor for Andersson coming over in a major trade. One goal in 10 games for a blueliner might not standout, for him it does. Andersson has 10 goals and 30 points in 48 games with Calgary at the start of this season. He\u2019s averaged double-digits the past three full seasons, scoring 31 total goals from 2022\/23 – 2024\/25. They\u2019ll definitely be looking for him to kick in more as he gets acclimated.<\/p>\n