The Penguins concluded a very successful road trip to Western Canada. For the first time in a while they went undefeated against Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver. The final two games their victories were by substantial margins.
After losing in Pittsburgh to Vancouver on yet another Brock Boeser goal the Penguins were not only able to keep him off the scoreboard, but their entire team in a 5-0 win. The big three had great games. Evgeni Malkin had two goals and an assist. Sidney Crosby had another two goals. Phil scored again and added a helper. The Penguins aren’t going to lose many games when both Sid and Geno put up a couple and that’s even without Phil there chipping in.
Sidney Crosby finishes the road trip with seven points while both Malkin and Kessel had six each. Pretty good. Malkin has 18 points on the year and is tied with Nathan MacKinnon for second overall in the league. They are both three points back of Mikko Rantanen
Daniel Sprong has been stuck in a rut playing in the bottom six. He was given a few shifts with Sidney Crosby and a single shift Evgeni Malkin. He was able to thread a great pass to Malkin for a goal in the third period on his lone shift with Malkin. Just as it was easy to remember Sprong getting trucked over by Alex Chiasson it should be easy to remember that pass to Malkin. Sprong had seven shot attempts for and zero against in his 52 second shift with Evgeni Malkin.
Patric Hornqvist who was on a hot streak was “rewarded… by getting placed with Matt Cullen and Riley Sheahan. He was only able to be on the ice for 7 shot attempts in 11 minutes with 13 against. There seems to be a pattern with the right wingers who have to play with Matt Cullen.
Kris Letang avoided an injury scare early on in the game. Losing him for any time with Justin Schultz out of the lineup would drastically change the landscape of the Penguins defense. It feels like the team is walking on eggshells in regards to needing Letang to stay healthy. His injury history speaks for itself.
The Canucks as a team might not be very good. They do have the previously mentioned Boeser as well as Elias Pettersson. Those two are really good players who are going to be fun to watch for a long time. They are so young that maybe they’ll still be good by the time Jim Benning is fired.
Pittsburgh will be back in action on Tuesday when they host the Islanders in what will be a home and home series that concludes Thursday in New York.
****
I have some non-hockey thoughts about what happened in squirrel hill which you can find here
Thanks for reading!