OTTAWA -- As Mike Sullivan and Guy Boucher could attest, but only behind closed doors, there were no shortage of missed calls and aggrieved parties Saturday night.
Give Kevin Pollock and Furman South full credit for that. They were nothing if not consistently inconsistent.
Sure, there was a missed slew foot that sent Kris Letang sprawling dangerously into the end boards. There was another slew foot by Bryan Rust that took down Colin White with a leg whip. There was an elbow to the face of Sidney Crosby that wasn't called, and another that was.
Really, we could go on ad nauseam about the penalties in a testy game between two teams now separated by just one point and jockeying for playoff positions.
But the one penalty that truly decided Saturday night's game was absolutely, 100-percent, spot on.
"It was too many men," Mike Sullivan said flatly.
Indeed, the Penguins' fifth penalty -- a too many men on the ice call just :58 into overtime -- was a no-brainer in every sense.
That call led to a 4-on-3 power play that ended with Ryan Dzingel putting a no-angle shot past Casey DeSmith and handing the Ottawa Senators a 2-1 win.
The coup de grace was Evgeni Malkin leaving the bench way too early to substitute a gassed Jake Guentzel. who had been on the ice for the first :58 of the lung-burning 3-on-3 session.
No, Guentzel didn't exactly haul tail to make it back to the bench but Malkin simply can't jump on the ice with Guentzel still a good 45 feet away:
Malkin took full blame for the penalty, and rightfully so. He said he knew that Guentzel was tired but saw an opportunity for a potential breakaway or at least a 1-on-1 against Ottawa defenseman Thomas Chabot. If only he waited a little longer ...
"I think I jumped early," he said. "It's my fault, huge mistake. We played a great game. Two minutes 4-on-3, I just jumped a little early. But I see that puck, I try to jump and have breakaway. Probably, I need to wait one more second."
This, of course, is nothing new to Malkin and the Penguins. He did the exact same thing Oct. 13 in Montreal. That penalty late in overtime came in a 4-3 shootout loss to the Canadiens.
"It's frustrating because we don't want to put ourselves in that position," Sullivan said. "I know Geno doesn't want to put us in that position. I know he's anxious to get on the ice, but we have to show a little more discipline."
Sure, the officiating was frustrating too, but not nearly as frustrating as the Senators.
With the top line loaded for bear with Phil Kessel on the right wing with Crosby and Guentzel, this game figured to be easy after that trio put on a clinic in puck possession on its second shift of the game, hemming Ottawa in its zone for nearly a full minute.
The Penguins dominated in almost every metric but the score. They outshot the Senators 36-29 (26-17 over the first two periods). Pittsburgh's Corsi For percentage in all situations was a lopsided 68-32.
The difference was that Ottawa, missing leading scorer Matt Duchene and Bobby Ryan, were committed to playing extremely tight defensively. The Senators might have chased the game, out-hitting the Penguins 34-25, but they also blocked 27 shots to Pittsburgh's seven.
That made for a busy -- but not too difficult -- night for Craig Anderson, who stopped 35 shots and whose goals saved above average was 3.25, compared to DeSmith's 1.21.
Want to talk about frustrating?
Only Marc-Andre Fleury has played more minutes this season than Anderson. None, however, had given up more goals -- by a large margin -- than Ottawa's 37-year-old goaltender. Anderson's 3.69 goals-against average is also by far the highest among goalies that have played at least 20 games this season.
And yet the Penguins, who had put up 12 goals over their previous two games, couldn't solve him.
But as good as the Penguins were, particularly early, there wasn't much layer to their attack. There wasn't much traffic, nor were there many rebounds to be had.
"I think if we could do it again, we'd try to get a little more traffic to get those second opportunities and even the first, but we had our chances," Crosby was telling me.
Indeed, Anderson was helped by his post on a Guentzel shot in the third and he just got a piece of Jack Johnson's shot from in front with 3:33 to go. But, bottom line, the Penguins managed just one goal.
"I thought we had a lot of opportunity to shoot but we passed it up," Sullivan said. "I thought (Kris Letang) had a bunch from the top of the power play, in the middle of the ice. Those shot opportunities are good opportunities from the middle because usually the rebound goes to an advantageous area if you don't score on the initial shot. Our team, I think we're guilty of that because we're always looking for that next play.
"You have to give (the Senators) credit, they defended hard. It wasn't like we weren't putting pucks to the net, we were. But I think we had opportunities."
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THREE STARS
My curtain calls go to …
1. Mark Stone
Senators center
Pair of assists from one of the most underrated players in the league. He now has four points in two games vs. Penguins.
2. Ryan Dzingel
Senators left winger
Sent the crowd home happy with his 12th of the season.
3. Craig Anderson
Senators goaltender
Made 35 saves on 36 shots after allowing nine goals over his previous two games.
THE INJURIES
• Penguins: Patric Hornqvist, right winger, missed his first game since suffering an upper body injury on Thursday. He is day to day. … Dominik Simon, forward, missed his second game with an upper body injury sustained Tuesday. He is on IR. … Matt Murray, goalie, is out longer term with a lower body injury. … Matt Cullen, center, is out longer term with a lower-body injury. … Both Cullen and Murray have been out since Nov. 17, but they are on the trip and skated on their own again on Saturday, after the morning skate. … Justin Schultz, defenseman, is expected to miss four months after fracturing his leg Oct. 13 in Montreal.
• Senators: Mark Borowiecki, defenseman, is on IR with an undisclosed injury. He will miss his seventh straight game. … J-G Pageau, center, is on IR with an Achilles injury but is skating.
THE GOOD
Yep, in the wake of Sullivan's shakeup, the Penguins were a one-line team on Saturday: The fourth line.
OK, that's a bit of a stretch but they were good.
It was the trio of Jean-Sebastien Dea, Garrett Wilson and Derek Grant that got the only puck past Anderson. And Dea wouldn't have even been playing had Hornqvist not taken himself out of the lineup in the morning.
In his first game back with the Penguins, Dea tied the score at 1-1 at 3:27 of the second period:
After Nick Paul turned the puck over in the neutral zone, thanks to some pressure from Grant and Wilson, Dea entered the zone with speed and swung wide to the right before sending a wrister over the glove hand of Anderson.
With Rouyn-Noranda in the QMJHL, Dea had been an accomplished marksman, recording seasons of 45 and 49 goals. But in the NHL, he's had to alter his game to become a prototypical bottom six player. On Saturday he even played 1:02 shorthanded, all of it in the third period.
It was Dea's first goal in the NHL since Oct. 16 with the Devils, a span of 15 games.
"This time, just got to keep it going," he said.
THE BAD
The NHL's leading scorer among defensemen is not John Carlson or Brent Burns or any of the other usual suspects. That distinction belongs to Ottawa's Tomas Chabot, a 21-year-old blueliner who recorded 25 points in 63 games as a rookie last season.
Chabot earned point No. 32 in Game No. 30 with his eighth goal of the season at 4:24 of the first period when he ripped a slap shot through traffic that beat DeSmith over the pad and under the glove:
Was it the kind of timely save you'd like to see DeSmith make? Sure.
But the goal was all on Maatta, who twice gave the puck away. First, he lost an edge pursuing the dump behind the net. Getting to his feet, he founded the puck and tried a backhanded clear ... but got nothing on it. Stone easily intercepted it and served it up for Chabot's one-timer from the blue line.
That early goal completely took away any and all momentum after the Crosby line's dominant second shift.
THE PLAY
The game was not over when the Penguins took their fourth bench penalty of the season. It just seemed that way.
Riley Sheahan lost the defensive zone draw to Colin White as the Penguins never touched the puck again in overtime until DeSmith angrily fished it out from his net just 22 seconds later.
With Stone patiently hanging on to the puck from the left circle, he fed a no-look, cross ice pass to Dzingel at the right side of the net. From an almost impossible angle, Dzingel beat DeSmith with a shot over the goalie's left shoulder:
"I knew he was looking for me," Dzingel said of Stone. "Obviously, 4-on-3, we're trying to get the puck in his hands, and he makes things happen."
THE CALL
Just 11 seconds into the second period, Zack Smith appeared to give Ottawa a 2-0 lead while it seemed the Penguins were stuck in intermission.
Smith, who later threw a forearm shiver into Crosby's face, drove unimpeded to the net and put his own rebound past DeSmith, who received zero help from his top defense pair or top line.
However, Sullivan challenged that Smith entered the zone offsides. Crosby seemed to notice it right away. Good thing, too.
Upon further review, it was determined in Toronto -- not by the on-ice officials -- that Smith's back skate was indeed barely in the air when he crossed the blue line.
You'll recall during last spring's GM meetings there was an attempt made to change the offside rule to allow a player to merely straddle the blue line regardless of whether a skate is touching the ice.
Had that goal counted, who knows how the game ends?
For what's it is worth, Sullivan is now 3-for-5 on the season when challenging.
THE OTHER SIDE
"Considering all the circumstances, that was an outstanding win for us," Boucher was saying afterward. "Great character and the guys sticking together and finding a way, and that's what we told ourselves: There's always a way."
The circumstances Boucher alluded to was the news during the morning skate that Duchene and Ryan were out indefinitely with their respective injuries.
Without Duchene, the NHL's 10th leading scorer, the Senators responded with a gritty -- though many in Pittsburgh might disagree -- effort, particularly from Smith and Brady Tkachuk. Legally and not so legally, those two seemed to get under the skin of Crosby and Letang.
After snapping their two-game losing streak, both against the Canadiens, the Senators won't have much time to celebrate. They will host the Bruins today at Canadian Tire Centre at 5 p.m.
The Senators are now 2-0 against the Penguins this season and will face them one more time on Feb. 1 in Pittsburgh. Last year, the Penguins swept the season series 3-0.
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins will have an off-day on Sunday. They will face the Islanders on Monday night in Uniondale, N.Y.
THE COVERAGE
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