The Pittsburgh Penguins are one win away from clinching their first Stanley Cup Playoff spot in four years, and they can get that Thursday when they visit the New Jersey Devils in Newark, N.J.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh (40-22-16, 96 points) comes into the final week of the regular season having won two straight and four of its last five. The Penguins have been on an offensive tear of late, as well. They have 30 goals in their last five games, including an eight-goal performance against the New York Islanders on March 30 and a nine-goal outburst versus the Florida Panthers on Saturday.<\/p>\n
With 277 goals, the Penguins entered Wednesday tied with the Tampa Bay Lightning for the second most in the league. Only the Colorado Avalanche, with 287, have lit the lamp more often.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh\u2019s Ryan Shea told reporters Wednesday that the team has played well as the playoff race has tightened down the stretch.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re fighting to get into probably the best playoffs in all sports. \u2026 I think it\u2019s just everyone\u2019s giving their all,\u201d said the third-year defenseman, 29, who has yet to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs. \u201cThe motivation\u2019s at an all-time high, but also the confidence is that high.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the Penguins have been on a tear, so has Rickard Rakell, who earned the NHL\u2019s top star last week with seven goals in five games. Over the last two weeks, Rakell, 32, has points in eight straight (10 goals, three assists), with at least one goal in his last five and seven out of the eight.<\/p>\n
Penguins coach Dan Muse told reporters that goalie Stuart Skinner practiced with the team Wednesday. Skinner did not play in either of the weekend home games against the Florida Panthers after a puck bounced off the plexiglass and hit him near the eye while he was on the bench during Saturday\u2019s contest.<\/p>\n
The team called up Sergei Murashov from its AHL affiliate to back up Arturs Silovs, and Muse said all three will make the trek to New Jersey.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen we\u2019ll determine a plan from there,\u201d Muse said.<\/p>\n
While the Penguins are a win away from making the playoffs, the Devils (40-35-3, 83 points) learned their fate Tuesday night. Their 5-1 home loss to the Philadelphia Flyers, coupled with the Ottawa Senators beating the Lightning moments later, officially eliminated them from postseason contention.<\/p>\n
Since 2019, the Devils have made the playoffs only twice. That includes last season in Sheldon Keefe\u2019s first year coaching the team.<\/p>\n
This season will mark the first time in his seven seasons behind an NHL bench that he won\u2019t guide a team to the playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult. It\u2019s embarrassing,\u201d he told reporters after the loss to the Flyers on Tuesday night. \u201cI don\u2019t like it. I\u2019ve coached for 20 years, and it\u2019s the first time I won\u2019t be participating in the playoffs at any level. So, it\u2019s not fun.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never been in a situation like this, but we\u2019ve earned this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Devils have lost three of their last five (2-2-1), but center Jack Hughes has been shining for them since returning from the Winter Olympics, where he scored the gold medal-winning goal for the U.S. team.<\/p>\n
Despite playing in just 57 games, Hughes leads the team with 72 points (25 goals, 47 assists). Half of those points (13 goals, 23 assists) have come in the 21 games he\u2019s played since the NHL resumed action. Tuesday\u2019s loss was only the fifth game in that span where he was held without a point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Penguins are one win away from clinching their first Stanley Cup Playoff spot in four years,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5113],"tags":[5,4,118,1469,100,5216],"class_list":{"0":"post-548346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-penguins","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-penguins","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","13":"tag-pittsburghpenguins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116371980940295150","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548346","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=548346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}