There were certainly other things that happened in the Penguins and Canadiens game last night, but nothing was better than what Sidney Crosby did. Crosby scored one of the better goals of the 2017-18 season last night on one of the better goalies in the league. With a lot of players you would claim a bit of luck, not with 87.
Hitting it out of the air and whacking it into the net on your backhand is within the skill set of players that play at your local rink. The difference here is situational recognition and reaction time to do it live, in a game setting, and on Carey Price. Hasn’t that defined Sidney Crosby’s career? A lot of the great things he does are simplistic, but he’s like a robot in how fast he recognizes when to do things and then how precise to do them. Surely, he does things that very few hockey players on earth can do, but a lot of his greatness is the mastery of things that you can teach amateur players. He’s just stronger, skates better, has better hands, and hardly makes a mistake. He’s as fundamentally sound as any player in league history. He also is able to incorporate skills that are mainly used when players are screwing around in practice and translates them into NHL goals.
Random piece of information that was provided to me about the Crosby goal last night that was worth passing along
As for the game the Penguins won 5-3 and earned two necessary points. They maintain their spot in second place with teams like Columbus and Philadelphia trying to leap frog them late in the year. For most of the season the Penguins had played more games than pretty much everybody in the league and that is no longer the case. Games in hand are not totally working against them now. A mini winning streak would go a long way in solidifying that second place slot. As of today there is a 42% chance of the Penguins first round matchup looking familiar. The Columbus Blue Jackets have jumped to the top of Micah Blake McCurdy’s playoff probability chart with the Flyers coming in at 29%. I’m sure the Blue Jackets are thrilled about that. They’ve made the playoffs three times in franchise history and two of them had Pittsburgh eliminating them in round one. Their other playoff appearance was against the 2008-09 Detroit Red Wings which were one of the best teams of the cap era. They haven’t had much luck with playoff seeding. There’s still some time left for things to change. If I’m in Columbus I’m probably hoping for that.
Mr. 101 eclipsed 90 points for the fourth time in his career last night picking up points 90 and 91. He is four behind Nikita Kucherov for the league lead and has a real shot at breaking the 100 point barrier. Since 2010-11 only Evgeni Malkin (109), Patrick Kane (106), Daniel Sedin (104), Sidney Crosby (104), and Connor McDavid (100) have scored that many in a season. It says a lot more about the state of the league than it does these players.
It’s gone a little bit under the radar, but Derick Brassard has a point in four straight games in including his power play goal last night. Those early “struggles” in Pittsburgh are getting further in the rear view mirror. His possession has been progressing along with his point production
Jake Guentzel had a three point night and it was one of his better outings of the year with a goal and two assists. He scored the fifth goal to put things away for the Penguins
Phil Kessel and Carey Price had a great battle last night. Phil had some great wrist shots that were thwarted by Price’s glove. While Kessel wasn’t able to beat him he did facilitate Guentzel’s goal with a great area pass. The good players make indirect passes to space while the lesser talented ones just mash it in the zone. Not a bad shot by Guentzel either.
One concerning thing for Pittsburgh heading into the playoffs is their propensity to give up high quality chances. They are a bottom five team in the league at preventing high-danger shot attempts at 5v5. They give up 12.15 attempts per 60 minutes. For comparison sake they were sixth worst last year, but also had unreal goaltending and were one of the best shooting teams in the league. The goaltending up to this point has not been where it was last year. Then again, Marc-Andre Fleury had a bad regular season and then played lights out against the Capitals. Fleury had an all-situations save percentage of .909 last year. Matt Murray’s save percentage this year… .909. So who knows with goalies.
Huge game on Friday night when the Penguins play the Devils. New Jersey was way better than the Penguins the last time the teams played and they won’t be any less desperate this time around either. A win is convenient for the Penguins while a loss would be devastating to the Devils who are battling with the Florida Panthers for the last spot in Eastern Conference playoffs.
Thanks for reading!
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