After last night the Penguins are on the cusp of doing something they haven’t done since the 2006-07 season. They are one win away from sweeping the season series against the Philadelphia Flyers. It won’t be as impressive as the 2006-07 season when the Penguins went 8-0 against the Flyers (10-0 if you count preseason), but you can only win the games you are scheduled to play and the Penguins are currently 3-0 versus Philadelphia.
A big reason for the victory was Sidney Crosby’s continuance of his decade long dominance of Philadelphia. He finished with three points and now has 37 goals and 91 points against the Flyers in only 62 games. His third point was the 1,100th of his remarkable career. If not for the Steckel incident my math would have him at 1,338 points based on his scoring rates at the time of injury.
Pittsburgh got off to a slow start in last night’s game. At even-strength the Flyers were dominating and the power play was aesthetically pleasing, but ineffective. The first unit moved the puck around the perimeter at will, but because there was no movement up top from Kris Letang and an unwillingness to shoot the Flyers were able to collapse and take away the dangerous east/west passes the Penguins were attempting. The problem with defending the Penguins power play is that if you have to do it enough times you will eventually make a mistake. This was the case for the Flyers who took four first period penalties. The Penguins were able to work the puck high to low in quick fashion and allow Evgeni Malkin to do his thing which was feed Phil Kessel wide open on the back door.
It came off a broken play where Patric Hornqvist won his battle on the wall. Letang and Crosby moved the puck quickly and the result was a 2 on 1 down low. Creating 2 on 1’s is the name of the power play game. Phil Kessel leads all players with 36 points on the power play. He now has 28 goals on the year. He hasn’t put up 30 goals in a season since 2013-14 when he scored 37 for Toronto. His 1.31 all situations goals per 60 is 1.31 the exact number it was in 2013-14. The only thing that is different is his ice time is lower than it was a few years back. It is why he won’t reach that 37 number this year unless he goes on an insane hot streak in the remaining 14 games.
The Flyers bounced back and scored the next two goals. The second goal was wonky and the result of Tristan Jarry misplaying the puck with his glove. Jarry has all the makings of a younger Marc-Andre Fleury. He’s athletic, makes some very impressive saves, and has the same spastic tendencies that cause unforced errors and a plethora of rebounds. You have to take the bad with the good. He’s young and still getting acclimated to the league. He bounced back from that goal and shut the door for the rest of the night.
A big story from last night was Conor Sheary awakening from his coma. He finally scored a goal and liked it so much he scored again. Sheary was a player that was pressing and as a result making a lot of unforced errors. He will always be susceptible to fumbling the puck because his hands are his hands, but the rate of those incidents were more common in his most recent sample of play. Due to injuries to Bryan Rust and Dominik Simon he was placed back on the Crosby line and he did not disappoint. The Guentzel-Crosby-Sheary line was reunited and if this can become a thing again it will really help out with the lineup depth.
Sidney Crosby made the most out of his 2v1 with Conor Sheary. The Flyers defender actually did a nice job and Crosby made the proper read in going with the pass off pads strategy. The pass of pads is only as good as the other player stopping in front of the net, which Conor Sheary did.
His second goal was a right place right time kind of play. Those kinds of things happen when your quality of teammate goes up. It also helped that Travis Konecny coughed up the puck to the middle of the ice on Jamie Oleksiak’s pinch. Oleksiak was able to read the play because Sheary’s forecheck forced the Flyers defender into one option which was up the wall.
Evgeni Malkin closed things out with an empty net goal. He is now two points behind Nikita Kucherov and two goals behind Alexander Ovechkin. By any standard Evgeni Malkin is having a tremendous season. This isn’t out of the ordinary for Geno. He does this almost every season. The difference is that he’s been able to play in more games.
The win has the Penguins in first place in the Metropolitan Division for now. Up next is a date with the Toronto Maple Leafs on Hockey Night in Canada.
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