It was a much needed win for the flightless birds. Pittsburgh was able to earn two points against their divisional rival Columbus Blue Jackets via the shootout. It’s a good thing they did because all six Metropolitan Division teams that were in action last night earned at least one point.
Pretty solid night of work by the team.
It isn’t lost on the players that they are on the cusp of some serious roster moves going down if the process doesn’t start leading to results.
Kris Letang had a really strong showing. He’s having more and more of those lately. I think that corner has been turned and we will start to see the play driving Letang he’s been his whole career. Here is what December has looked like
There’s a lot more good than bad. Out of the ten games only two were below 50% and one was at the very beginning of the month. This is a good sign for the Penguins and will only get better when Justin Schultz comes back.
Newcomer Jamie Oleksiak was one of the few Penguins in the negative last night. It’s only one game and it is his first game with a new team, but possession isn’t his strength and probably never will be. Penalties or not Ian Cole shouldn’t be sitting for this player. The writing is on the wall for Cole.
It was the first meeting of the year between the Penguins and Blue Jackets and tensions were high. These are the games Jim Rutherford acquired Ryan Reaves for. He beat up Lukas Sedlak in the first period to set the tone. Strangely enough after that tone was set the Penguins two superstars found themselves needing to defend themselves at the end of the second period. Evgeni Malkin literally got into a fight and Sidney Crosby got into it with Seth Jones. While Ryan Reaves can’t control whether or not Crosby and/or Malkin get into scrums on their own accord his presence is supposed to scare the opponents from engaging with them, in theory of course. This is just the latest example of how silly his role is with the team. It’s also worth noting that the Penguins are desperate for wins and can’t afford to give players ice time who don’t contribute to goals, Reaves only played ~1:17 after the two star players were left to defend themselves. So it goes. This is the reality of rostering this player. Fortunately, the other players picked up the slack on this evening.
Pittsburgh relied on their trusty power play to get back into the game. Patric Hornqvist celebrated his return to the lineup with a nice tip on a Phil Kessel shot on the power play.
This was a really nice goal that highlighted some of the specific skill sets of the players involved. Patric Hornqvist won a corner battle and got the puck up to Letang. The Letang walked the blue line hard and the top penalty killer had to respect his shooting lane. When the puck gets slid over to Phil he has more than enough time to skate into one of his infamous snap shots. Hornqvist was already down low and is able to get his stick on the puck. Simple, yet effective.
Their next power play goal came off the rush and also involved some impressive eye hand coordination
Crosby and Malkin took advantage of Calvert missing the net wide. This is even more problematic because it was a 4 on 3 power play. Evgeni Malkin drove the defense back and dropped the puck to Crosby who tried to beat Bobrovsky high short side. For all you kids out there watch how Evgeni Malkin stopped at the goal line instead of curling away. He was a little bit lucky his baseball attempt went in, but it can’t go in if you curl away from the play.
One of the biggest areas where the team will miss Marc-Andre Fleury is on the shootouts. He is probably the top goalie at the shootout since it was put in during the 2005-06 season. Matt Murray has some big skates to fill. Murray was able to stop three out of the four Blue Jackets attempt while Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang were able to convert on their attempts.
Up next for the Penguins are the Ducks. Conveniently local product John Gibson will be able to stay in town for the holidays. A nice perk of his team’s schedule.
Thanks for reading!