It started with a strong shift from Malkin\u2019s line with Rakell and Tommy Novak, along with defensemen Kris Letang and Sam Girard, who have started to come together as a pairing. They were buzzing, and the next line came over the boards and continued that momentum.<\/p>\n
Anthony Mantha netted his team-leading 31st goal of the season just over two minutes in, as the best free agent signing by any team this offseason put a puck on net that deflected in off a Panther stick.<\/p>\n
Malkin\u2019s milestone tally came on the power play, when he deflected a pass from Karlsson.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe called for it, I think, for a minute straight. I refused to give it to him until it was time,\u201d Karlsson said with a grin. \u201cObviously, that was a good sequence for us. I think we generated a lot on the power play and created a lot of looks.<\/p>\n
Malkin\u2019s next goal came off another re-direction, with the feed from Novak.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always nice to see when the big man is moving,\u201d Karlsson said. \u201cHe wanted it today. Obviously, he\u2019s a big part of this team, and going down the stretch here now is how they made a living. Today, they showed it.”<\/p>\n
Less than 90 seconds later, Soderblom found one \u2013 and ended Bobrovsky\u2019s night at the 9:53 mark of the middle frame.<\/p>\n
With just over two minutes to go,\u00a0Rakell scored yet another goal on the man-advantage. The Penguins ended the night 3-for-3 on the power play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we generated a lot on the power play and created a lot of looks,\u201d Karlsson said. \u201cSometimes you do that, and they don\u2019t go in for you. Luckily, today, they did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shortly after, the Penguins got one more goal from blueliner Ryan Shea to take a 6-2 lead into the third period. Malkin completed the hat trick just 3:30 into the final frame, with the fans at PPG Paints Arena giving the franchise forward a standing ovation and chanting \u201cGENO! GENO! GENO!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI almost cried a little bit, you know? It\u2019s huge for me,\u201d he said. \u201cI scored a hat trick a long time ago, I don\u2019t remember when I scored last time. Again, it\u2019s lots of emotion. And I want to say thank you. Thank you for the support for myself, (the) team. It\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It started with a strong shift from Malkin\u2019s line with Rakell and Tommy Novak, along with defensemen Kris…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5102],"tags":[62,57,5141,5,4,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-541561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-panthers","10":"tag-floridapanthers","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-panthers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116350451958751375","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541561","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=541561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}