The Penguins took care of the easy half of their week by dispatching the Buffalo Sabres 4-2 on Thursday night. With victories over the Senators and Sabres the Penguins have moved away from their six game losing streak. Tough tests lie ahead this weekend, though the four points is great to have banked before the back to back with the Capitals and Hurricanes.
Things are trending up. The defense has stabilized and the team looks threatening more often. Nick Bjugstad is back so the possibility of a third line who can contribute offensively is likelier. When you look around the Metropolitan Division the Penguins are five and six points ahead of the Blue Jackets and Islanders in the Wild Card and are comfortably in third place in the division. The Flyers have been awesome lately, but were dealt a bad blow as James van Riemsdyk broke a finger and will miss about a month. The Penguins are three points behind the Flyers and Capitals with a game in hand. The Hurricanes are suffering after losing Brett Pesce. They were making things work without Dougie Hamilton. The Pesce injury was an injury too far. Sami Vatanen was traded for, but hasn’t played a game because of injury. The Hurricanes are more like a gust lately. They’ve lost four straight and haven’t won since EBUG David Ayres was between the pipes.
Patric Hornqvist scored twice even if his first one shouldn’t have counted. His goal scoring ways are much improved this year. In 20 fewer games he has 14 goals at 5v5 which is two better than last year’s 12. It is imperative for Hornqvist to provide this production at his price tag and he has so far this year. He is also spending fewer minutes with Crosby and Malkin than ever before so it makes the 5v5 goals more encouraging. He’s always going to get his looks on the power play in front of the net and he scored there last night as well. I can see a Simon-Bjugstad-Hornqvist line doing their xGF% thing again, but this time actually finishing some scoring chances. I know Mike Sullivan loves the ZAR-Blueger-Tanev line, but having the threat of scoring a goal on all four lines seems like a better allocation of resources than an all defense line. The fact we can even have a discussion about this is encouraging and speaks to the newfound depth. If nothing else a fourth line that can play ~ten minutes keeps the others fresh and nobody has to talk themselves into Sam Lafferty anymore, that is for sure.
The GREATEST HOCKEY HIT EVER (by a ghost) @NHL @penguins @BuffaloSabres #NHL pic.twitter.com/6Up8Wzyoti
— Steve Byrne (@stevebyrnelive) March 6, 2020
That’s no ghost, sir. That is the power of a Jack Johnson icing attempt. This is a hilarious sequence with two players who actively make their team worse on a regular basis. Earlier in the game Johnson’s poor decision making led to a 2-0 and Murray making perhaps his best save of the evening.
This kind of stuff will ruin you in the playoffs. Johnson gets the puck on his stick, in the middle of a line change, and turns it over. Worst possible area and worst possible moment for it. Then, he gets caught in the NZ and absolutely torched. Murray bails him out big time. pic.twitter.com/GCSz59jebO
— Jesse Marshall (@jmarshfof) March 6, 2020
Johnson later failed to keep a bouncing puck in at the blue line, actually did a good job recovering and retrieving the puck, then for some unknown reason just flung the puck without looking right back to the Sabres. Dominik Kahun helped transition the puck back towards the Penguins and Marcus Johansson immediately scored a goal to make it a one goal game.
With the team being as close to full health as they’ve been all year the youth hockey mistakes will become more and more glaring each passing game.
The Sabres played a dude named Jonas Johnansson. He got acclimated to Sidney Crosby’s backhand. It wasn’t Sid’s best backhand, but it still fools goalies all the same.
Jason Zucker is going to find he can earn a lot of easy assists if he can hit Sid with speed through the neutral zone.
Thanks for reading!