Penguins / Capitals recap: Sid called the game. Pens make wild comeback in 5-4 win

Before the match

Kasperi Kapanen makes his Penguins debut, otherwise Pittsburgh’s roster is the same as Sunday’s win.

The Capitals decide to change the net to give Vitek Vanecek a start and put Daniel Sprong up one line since the last game.

First period

The Caps strike first on the rush. After a shot attempt by Juuso Riikola is blocked, Washington erupts in a rush towards a strange man. TJ Oshie makes a nice cross pass to Lars Eller for a quick release which beats Casey DeSmith. 1-0 WSH 4:55 in the match.

The pens are slow, the forward chop doesn’t start, their breakouts aren’t sharp, the defenders are skating the puck, not sure what’s going on here, but it’s not pretty.

Finally, the newer Penguin provides a bullet in the arm and some energy. Kapanen controls the puck on the ice and walks into the zone with possession (which sounds pretty exciting for as boring as the play was) and unleashes a shot at Vanecek. The keeper can’t control the rebound and Teddy Blueger and Colton Sceviour are there to touch it. The goal is credited to Sceviour and it is briefly a draw.

And by “briefly” I mean the tie lasts six seconds. Blueger is sent off from the face-off which follows by the referee, Sceviour loses it net and the Caps are thrown again in the race. Tom Wilson has room to shoot, so he does and DeSmith isn’t far enough on his angle, even though he’s at the top of the painting – and the puck hits his shoulder and goes in. The woes of being a 6’0 ”goalie in the NHL! 2-1 Caps.

As if that weren’t enough, the Pens are two goals behind before the end of the period. Wilson cuts to the net and Brian Dumoulin can’t catch him (after a bad change) and John Carlson hits Wilson with a nice pass to break the net to make it a 3-1 game with 16 seconds left. I don’t really know what Brandon Tanev and John Marino were doing to defend Carlson, but it’s kind of the level of effort of the whole team.

Hits end with 11-5 caps, in what I believe is the first full time of the year to be played exclusively in 5v5. The Pens seemed lucky to come out of a really bad period with a goal, or even tied for a second. But it was not.

The thing is, if the Pens have done very little, the Caps have not made a TON either (until the last minutes with two Wilson goals, which obviously matters a lot). Corsi events were 16-13 Caps. Odds of scoring were 8-7 Pens, odds of high danger 4-3 Caps. The Pens were coming back into the game when they scored their first goal (the yellow dot, per Natural Stat Trick), but the bottom then gave up.

Second period

Kapanen looks good in goal, then Pettersson and Marino both pinch, no striker covers up and Washington gets a 3-0 run on the ice. They pass, but DeSmith does well to keep the puck out of the net on Carl Hagelin’s shot (thank goodness that was him).

Pittsburgh continues to push, the fourth row was the best and they are taking a power play. The Pens get 1:21 of a 5v3 advantage when Lars Eller joins Orlov in the box. It takes a bit of time and is sloppy, but luckily they move the puck twice on the ice and Bryan Rust is able to bang it to make Jake Guentzel slam at home. 3-2 game

The Pens’ inability to properly control the puck in the middle of the ice, or defend the run or secure a good goalie continues to unfold in a microcosm of the season for Washington’s fourth goal. The Caps pick up the puck, get no resistance, throw a puck across the net DeSmith can’t handle and Evgeni Kuznetsov is totally free to hit in the loose rebound. Ugly trick of the local team which is again two goals behind, 4-2.

Washington gets their first power play of the night when Guentzel is called out for a crash. Tanev grabs an Ovechkin slapper and falls hard. The Pens repeat Washington’s first period mistake when Chad Ruhwedel is sent for a slash to give the Caps a 53 seconds 5v3.

There is a goal in this streak, but … it’s by the Penguins in a 3v5. The Caps show some negligence with a lazy dump right towards DeSmith. The goalie does a great job sending the puck into space and Teddy Blueger is behind the entire Caps team! Blueger coldly hits the backhand and slips it through Vanecek’s five holes. 4-3 game

As the power play dies, Oshie KOs Pettersson right in the middle of the ice, sending Pittsburgh to a power play, but also abandoning Pettersson. It’s called a five-minute middle finger, but after an exam it is reduced to a two-minute interference call.

Malkin cashed with his first goal of the season on a slapper to bring the score to 4-4.

The shots of the 2nd end with a 10-7 total in favor of the Pens. In total, there were 33 SOGs in this game and eight goals. Coaches need to be in good shape to see the team’s defense in tatters and rush from start to finish for both teams.

Third period

No Pettersson or Riikola to start the period, so the Pens are four defenders. Charming.

The game settles in a bit, although Kuznetsov slips a puck under DeSmith, but not quite over the line.

Fatigue is setting in now, the pens are able to wear the game and get the Caps to freeze the puck a bit, but Pittsburgh is essentially capable of throwing point shots and long range attempts.

Guentzel nearly redirects a shot to Letang’s point 2 minutes from time, which brings the pens closer. The shots in the 3rd are 12-7 pens. No one can score, so again we get …

Overtime

The Pens basically own the puck through all overtime, first with a Malkin shift, then Crosby won a Zone D draw and that’s all she wrote. Nice job from Jake Guentzel to enter the area and drop the puck, recover it, find the point shot. Letang shot, watch Crosby’s feet go from 9 to 3 as he chases the rebound and swings it home. So difficult, but so easy. It’s art. 5-4, the Pens win!

Some ideas

• It took over seven minutes for the Pens to get a shot on goal. At that point, they were down 1-0.
• Players at the bottom of the line-up getting reduced minutes once on the ice for a goal against is a staple these days (see Lafferty, Daniel, uh Sam who was fired from the squad after being guilty of a goal in the last game). Riikola-Ruhwedel being sure for the first goal saw them play 3:15 and 3:35 in the first half, it was entirely ES. Brian Dumoulin played 9:24, Kris Letang 9:20. John Marino was 7:20 in the first period and Marcus Pettersson was 6:57 as the team were essentially overtaking the top two pair for the majority of the period.
• The Pens would be reduced to 4 defenders, and not by choice at the end of the game, overtaking Dumoulin / Letang and Ruhwedel / Marino. Fortunately, they resisted well and were able to play most of the time not on their side.
• A minor line change in strategy was made for the start of the second; Bryan Rust will play with Mark Jankowski and Jared McCann, Brandon Tanev rushes to join Evgeni Malkin and Jason Zucker.
• This fourth goal against really highlights the lack of pre-season and neglect. An attacker does not call, Tanev is in the picture but not close to recognizing the numbers against. Marino left a wide gap on his player for the initial shot. Pettersson played the frontcourt more than a player and was effectively useless when the big rebound kicked in at a sharp angle.
• Again, the Pens’ third goal on a 3v5 still showed Washington’s neglect. It’s a process that everyone in the league has to go through so they hardly have time to ramp up, and it shows all over the ice.
• And you really can’t overstate the magnitude of this DeSmith and Blueger piece. With a 5v3 for 51 seconds, the Caps were poised to make it a 5-2 game and put a stake in the proverbial Pens heart. Instead, he ended up not only escaping Pittsburgh with 4-2, but scoring to make it 4-3.
• I wonder if Player Safety will call Oshie. Blindside hit that knocked a player out of the game and was a little late, was the type of hard, pointless crash that the NHL is supposed to be trying to get out of the game.

Unlock game keys (from preview)

# 1 penalty woes. Both teams reduced significant ruts in the penalty box. Both teams played a clear first, but Washington failed by taking two quick penalties, which allowed the Pens to narrow their lead to one goal at 3-2. Then in the second period, the Penguins ended up taking two penalties in the same streak, although Blueger’s unlikely goal helped a lot. Oshie’s great success gave the Pens another special teams goal from Malkin to score the game. Not too many men on the bench for Pittsburgh at least!

# 2 Top six on track. Guentzel and Malkin scored and Crosby recorded two assists, albeit all on the power play. Then Guentzel, Letang and Crosby combined for the OT winner. Must feel good for these guys to be rewarded and get on the move, it wasn’t the sweetest or at a usual 5v5, but the big guns often went up on the board and the pens won. Quite successful formula.

# 3 Questions in each network. The Pens decided to take DeSmith’s winning hand from the last game. He’s given up cluster goals, including Wilson’s first goal on an unfiltered long range shot that you would certainly like a goalie to stop, especially literally seconds after the Pens tied the game at 1- 1. But he also stopped a 3v0 run and made a great play to start a 3v5 goal, so there was good and bad. On the other hand, Vanecek wasn’t exactly on his feet either and also at the mercy of poor team defense.

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In all, a victory is a victory. Good for the Pens to recover from two two-goal deficits and pick up two points at the end of the night. Now we wait to see and hear how long their missing defenders might be out.