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The Edmonton Oilers defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins in front of an excellent home crowd 4-3 in overtime. It is the 2nd consecutive overtime game for the Penguins on their Western Canada road swing, but unlike the Canucks game the Penguins could not close it out for a victory.
Mistakes were made and talented hockey players made the Penguins pay the price.
One thing I would like to mention before diving into the game related information is that I wish the Penguins could play in Edmonton more often. For starters, the ice quality is terrific unlike the slosh they play on in Pittsburgh. But more importantly the fans in Rexall Place are there to watch hockey and you can feel that energy through the television set.
Edmonton was jazzed up to see Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin do their thing. This was evident when Crosby and Malkin were trying to make plays towards the Edmonton goal and you could hear the very quiet “oooooh’s… from the crowd. The cheers for Dubynk’s saves were delayed because the fans were attentively soaking in the offensive plays being made. This is why the NHL absolutely had to get back to having every NHL team play in every NHL city and I am glad they did.
Back to the game, the Oilers young guns were more than happy to pounce on the Penguins mistakes. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored twice, including the game winner in overtime and Taylor Hall also added a goal.
Here is the possession chart:
Here are the highlights:
The subject of my blog yesterday, Jordan Eberle, made a terrific feed across to RNH for the deciding goal in overtime on the power play. Eberle also added a primary assists on the 1st Nugent-Hopkins goal.
The mistakes the Penguins made were completely avoidable and extremely costly.
Deryk Engelland muffed a play in transition that an NHL player cannot allow to happen. Kris Letang made a perfect stretch pass to Engelland who was wide open; the Penguins defenseman wisely used that opportunity to attempt a line change. Engelland totally botched the reception of the pass it led to a blue line turnover. The blue line turnover did not allow time for a proper change and Rob Scuderi had to retreat back onto the ice. Kris Letang was able to change but Brooks Orpik did not have enough time to get into position after Letang got off. Without the opportunity to bust their butts up the ice into the neutral zone, gap control was an impossible task for both Scuderi and Orpik. Gap control is everything at the NHL level when you have speedsters like Taylor Hall on the ice.
Craig Adams had a chance to clear the puck on the penalty kill but he flubbed his attempt. The consequence was the game winning goal for Edmonton in overtime.
I know there has been criticism of the personnel unit the Penguins were using in overtime to kill the penalty but I don’t agree with that criticism. The Penguins have had the 2nd best PK in the league for some time now and those are the guys that play a ton of minutes on it. The reality of the situation is that killing a 3 on 4 penalty is one of the toughest things to do in hockey, especially so when you have the dynamic offensive weapons that the Oilers can implement.
Evgeni Malkin was guility of a selfish penalty when he got himself into an altercation with Edmonton goaltender Devan Dubnyk. The result of that penalty was an early third period power play goal for the Oilers. Malkin can’t get caught up in that kind of BS.
The mistakes did not go unnoticed by one Penguins player. That player was Rob Scuderi. Scuderi laid into the team about their fascination with trying to make the highlight reel plays.
Scuderi might not be playing his best hockey right now:
Cause for concern or working off the rust: Since he's returned, PIT outscored 10-3 and out shot-attemted 114-56 with Scuderi on ice at 5v5.
— Adam Gretz (@AGretz) January 11, 2014But his valueto the team goes well byond his on ice product.
Here are his quotes courtesy of Josh Yohe of the Pittsburgh Tribune :
If you're going to try and play hockey like the Harlem Globetrotters, you're going to get burned. We continue to make the same mistakes, go for the same highlight reel plays.That might look good on the highlight reels every now and then, but it's not a formula for winning
It was the whole team the entire game. We did a good job of trying to keep it together. Our goalie (Jeff Zatkoff) made some big saves. But you can't ask that much of a goalie and a defense, a team defense , for 60 minutes. It's not going to pay off.
This is a big part of why re-signing Rob Scuderi was so important for the Penguins. He commands respect. The core members of this team have all won a Stanley Cup with him and everybody on the roster saw him win a Cup with the LA Kings. Scuderi is unique in that he brings an outsider point of view to the locker room because of his time away from the Penguins, but he never lost the respect of his former teammates. His words carry weight.
There is a reason he is “The Piece….
The Penguins continue to get absolutely no offense from their bottom 6 forward grouping.
The stars showed up again as Sidney Crosby scored his first ever goal against the Oilers, James Neal and Kris Letang scored, while Evgeni Malkin had an assist.
All is not lost though, the Penguins have the opportunity to close out their road trip by defeating the struggling Calgary Flames. If the Penguins can win they will have taken 5 out of a possible 6 points and that is very successful trip in my book. If the Penguins continue to take 5 out every 6 points they will continue to give Ray Shero a buffer zone so that he does not have to make a trade before he wants to, even if the Penguins desperately need some scoring depth.
Thanks for reading!
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