Penguins lose first game at home this year (Bruce Boudreau)

Bruce Boudreau

Penguins lose first game at home this year

By Ryan Wilson

Nov 11, 2016 • 11:46 am

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Pittsburgh failed to take a point in last night's contest for the first time since October 22nd when they lost 5-1 to the Nashville Predators. The Penguins were tied 2-2 heading into the third period last night, but Minnesota pulled away in the third period with the go ahead goal and the empty net insurance goal. This is the first home loss of the season.

Here is how things played out

I spoke about how the Wild have been doing a better job of scoring goals at even-strength this year and they were able to get three of them. They have a litter of players producing at a first line rate and one of those players is Charlie Coyle. He scored twice including one on the power play. Eric Staal continues to pester the Penguins as he had a goal and two assists. Staal was a really nice under the radar signing by Minnesota.

Nino Niederreiter had a pretty mint goal

Great hands. Amazing the Wild were able to acquire him for a fourth liner.

This is a far cry from the Jacques Lemaire Wild teams. Last night's game saw the Wild throw 75 shot attempts at the net in all situations with the Penguins almost matching that with 73. At a quick glance I believe that is the highest combined shot attempt total for a game this year. High event hockey makes for a more enjoyable product.

Heading into the game Minnesota's penalty kill had one of the better success rates in the league. Pittsburgh's power play scored twice. The first goal by Sidney Crosby was excellent. He is the best tipper in the league and he has been getting more opportunities to flash off that skill lately.

I'm very excited to see Crosby's goal total at the end of the year. His shooting percentage is unsustainably high right now (31%), but he is getting the puck a lot near the net and he is always going to have a good percentage from that area. If he continues to buy into the #SidDownLow concept I think he has a good look at besting his career high in power play goals for a season which was 16 his rookie year. He is going to get so many freebies just by being a puck hound near the net. I love this development.

Patric Hornqvist scored his fifth goal of the year last night and his start to 2016-17 is infintely better than 2015-16. The coaching change has done wonders for his offensive production. He is currently on pace for 29 goals this year which would be one less than his career high of 30 back in 2009-10. Hornqvist is currently below his career shooting percentage of 9.3% which is encouraging that he isn't on this goal pace due to an inflated number.

Phil Kessel is famous for his goal scoring, but he is racking up the assists this year. He added another two last night and now has the team lead with ten.

Great news on the jersey front

This should be a permanent decision in my opinion. My biggest argument for home whites is the fact that if the Penguins wear dark at home the crowd is going to see black versus white for 41 games per year. By wearing white at home you are going to see so many different colors coming into the building and I think that is more interesting.

I'd like to give a shout out to my friend and high school/college teammate Mark Magnanti who creates design wraps for goalie masks. He has been creating masks for amateur and college players for the past couple of years, but recently he was given two NHL related jobs for the Buffalo Sabres and did a great job on them. And yes, one of those masks was the 'Trump' mask for Robin Lehner.

Here is the Hockey Fights Cancer mask he created for Anders Nilsson

I think the work is really good and I wanted to share it. You can find some of his other work on his Instagram page which is at @skinfxwraps or on his facebook page which you can find here

Pittsburgh hosts Toronto and all of their exciting young forwards tomorrow.

Thanks for reading!

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