The Penguins started their busy week with a win over the Boston Bruins by a score of 4-1. Tristan Jarry significantly outplayed Jaro Halak and Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby both found the back of the net to secure the victory. It wasn’t the type of game I would run back at the Bruins. The Penguins conceded 60% of the shot attempts and the Bruins were a 61% xGF team on the evening.
Let’s start with Evgeni Malkin’s amazing accomplishment of reaching 1,100 points in the NHL. He is the 18th fastest player to get to 1,100. He did it on a pass from Sidney Crosby on the power play.
Sid to Malkin. Money pic.twitter.com/6SInJPZyxj
— SB Nation NHL (@SBNationNHL) March 16, 2021
1,100 career points for Evgeni Malkin!
— Penguins PR (@PenguinsPR) March 16, 2021
In his 935th career game, Malkin becomes the 18th-fastest player (tied) in NHL history to record 1,100 career points. pic.twitter.com/ReVyU6ydoJ
When you look at the list there are only two players from the cap era on there. Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby. Quite the duo.
Geno and Sid have now combined for 1,918 points in the 788 regular season games they've played together.
— Bob Grove (@bobgrove91) March 16, 2021
Malkin also extended his point streak to eight games and now has four goals and eight assists during the streak. He has an assist in each of the eight games.
Not to be outdone Crosby had a goal and two assists in the game and has a seven game point streak going himself. Crosby has four goals and 11 points during the streak. This is the template for the Penguins to be good. Crosby and Malkin playing like they found a time machine and the goaltending playing solid.
Jake Guentzel’s empty net goal extended his four game goal scoring streak just under the wire.
Not everything was good.
I thought Mike Sullivan got bailed out by his goalie last night. Jarry stopped 42 out of 43 shots having a great night after taking the last game off. The reason I believe Sullivan got bailed out by his goaltender is because he neutered his best line intentionally. The Penguins are on home ice so they have last change. Sullivan was insistent on playing the Crosby line against the Bergeron line. Not only did this lead to minimal offensive chances for the Penguins, but they didn’t do much to slow down the Bruins line either. Here were the results last night for Sidney Crosby against each member of the Bruins top line
This is a pretty bad job by the Penguins coach. You might say “well, Sid had three points how bad could it have been…. None of those points were at 5v5 against the Bergeron line. Sid’s bad angle goal came against a different line, his assist to Geno was on the power play, and the final point was in an empty net situation. I don’t understand why Sullivan doesn’t just throw the ZAR-Blueger-Tanev line to the wolves against Bergeron to free up Crosby. This is still a top heavy team and at the moment you can see your top players are feeling it. Give them as many favorable matchups as you can. Isn’t the entire point of the ZAR-Blueger-Tanev line to soak up unfavorable assignments? It should be. We’ll see if any adjustments are made tonight.
Also, Sullivan will have to get the fourth line more minutes whether he (or we) want him to or not. Colton Sceviour played 6:12 and Anthony Angello played 7:08. When you have five games in seven days you have to open things up so you don’t wear the top of the roster down. Mark Jankowski did hit the ten minutes played mark, but did so with four minutes of penalty killing. Sidney Crosby was pushing 23 minutes played and Letang was pushing 27 minutes played. I’d like to see those numbers a little lower during this stretch of play.
The teams get to do it all over again tonight. Penguins with another great opportunity to keep gaining ground in the standings.
Thanks for reading!