Evgeni Malkin celebrates his first goal Sunday at PPG Paints Arena. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

Penguins

Kovacevic: Penguins better keep digging

Feb 17, 2019 • 11:59 pm

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"Everybody. That's who had something to say. Everybody."

That was Marcus Pettersson.

It's a stretch to portray the Penguins' second intermission Sunday as having been pivotal to saving their season. There's still a ton of hockey left, and a single point in the standings can be overcome with a single shot.

And yet ...

There they sat at their stalls, fresh off heaving away another multiple-goal lead, humbled right back into a tie game and, worse by far, having to kill off most of a four-minute high-sticking minor once they'd retake the ice.

So yeah, from what I was told by Pettersson and several other players, they spoke up. A bunch of them. Sidney Crosby. Kris Letang. Evgeni Malkin. Patric Hornqvist. Brian Dumoulin. Matt Cullen. The voices, by all accounts, came from all corners.

"We felt like we could change the game," Pettersson told me. "Those big penalties, if you can kill them, it's such a positive. That's how we looked at it."

"We knew we couldn't give one up there," Dumoulin would essentially echo. "We wanted to use it to our advantage, to shift the game our way."

"You knew it then," Letang would add at the next stall. "It's a 3-3 game, they had four minutes on the power play, and they could turn the game around. But if we can kill it, the momentum goes back on our side. And that's what happened."

Sure did. Penguins 6, Rangers 5.

Letang was instrumental in the kill, with back-to-back blocks ...

... but Cullen was front and center, taking one 20-second breather for that 42-year-old frame before hopping right back over the boards, paired with Bryan Rust and backed by Letang and Dumoulin. The other set -- and Mike Sullivan trusted only two for the entire time -- had a couple of rookies up front, Teddy Blueger and Zach Aston-Reese, backed by Jack Johnson and Chad Ruhwedel.

New York's power play, which had been humming at 10-for-30 clip over the previous dozen games, often set up, occasionally swarmed, but put only two pucks on Casey DeSmith, both fairly harmless. The faceoffs were clean, the positioning flawless, the sticks in perfect place for a New York power play that prefers dissecting the box.

"The guys took away all the seams," DeSmith recalled. "The Rangers really liked hitting those seams, and our guys did a good job with that, for sure."

As the ticks wound down, Crosby stood and bounced eagerly in the box, the capacity crowd of 18,646 stood and roared to a very Pittsburgh-like crescendo for a big kill, one final clearance was made ... and that was it.

Until Crosby channeled all that eagerness, following the ensuing faceoff, right down the rink into this:

Stop the tape a moment and marvel at that. Not just because it brought the Penguins the lead for keeps. Not just the top-shelf finish, which, as Letang was gleefully confessing afterward, he saw and crushed. But also how Crosby passes to the player he trusts most in the world, even though he appears to be covered by New York's Filip Chytil.

"But I'm not, really," as Letang would explain to me. "I'm coming off the bench and going hard toward Sid. Sid knows that. The guy's gonna go with Sid's pass, so he's skating my way, and I just have to go around him."

Nice. Also, a stick tap to Jake Guentzel for engulfing poor Alexandar Georgiev in the blue paint.

It's the little things, huh?

Anyway, that was Letang's second goal of the afternoon, and it'd soon be topped by two Malkin goals, one of them obscene to make it 6-3 within a three-goal 5:19 whirlwind once Crosby returned. The young, quick Rangers would rally, but the game had been decided precisely when pretty much everyone had expected it would.

Including the opposition.

"We got demoralized and they got a new set of energy, a new lift," New York coach David Quinn observed of the kill. "The whole complexion of the game changed. It was really unfortunate."

Eh, not for everyone:

A young fan cheers the end of the Penguins' big kill. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

This will be the new norm, I'm betting. This group has been insanely inconsistent all winter, but that's got to expire. All they achieved leading into this game was falling into a 5-8-1 funk. All they achieved in taking these two points was slipping one ahead of the idle Hurricanes for the East's final playoff spot at 31-21-7. Next up are the Devils, who they never beat, then the Sharks, who emasculated them last month in San Jose, and then all the outdoor fuss next weekend in Philadelphia.

Better start finding a way, even when things look bleak.

"That's how it's going to be," Dumoulin said. "Everything's really tight right now. A lot of teams are fighting for playoff spots. We feel like that's going to make us better in the long run. If we keep chipping away, getting points in these games, bearing down ... that'll be beneficial when it gets to be playoff time. We've just got to embrace the race here."

Dumoulin, more of a leader on the team than maybe most realize, began espousing that message with his mates out on the West Coast. Now, possibly, it's resonating.

"I believe we have what it takes," Sullivan would speak from the podium a bit later. "That's what I told the players: We can't be afraid of it. We've got to get excited about it. We've talked about embracing it. And we have so much experience to draw on, playing in a high-stakes environment. We've just got to control what we can. I believe that, as long as we stay focused, stay on the game at hand, we've got what it takes to win."

THE ESSENTIALS

• Boxscore

• Play-by-play

• Advanced analytics

• Video highlights

• NHL scoreboard

• NHL standings

THREE STARS

My curtain calls go to …

1. Kris Letang

Penguins defenseman

His 15 goals have him one shy of his career high, set in 2015-16. That's also tied for the NHL lead with the Maple Leafs' Morgan Rielly. In other words, if he isn't a Norris Trophy finalist, something's really, really wrong with the process.

2. Brian Dumoulin

Penguins defenseman

Put home his second goal, but was exceptional over all 200 feet, including one excellent shot-blocking sequence in the second period.

3. Evgeni Malkin

Penguins center

Someone woke the Bear. Much more on his day in our Drive To The Net.

THE GOOD

Loved Pettersson's offensive game on this day.

The power-play goal was impressive on its own ...

... considering Nick Bjugstad's pass arrived at his front foot -- the only way it could get through -- and he had to shift weight to get off the shot, though he downplayed that when I brought it up, saying, "I was moving forward, so it wasn't a big deal."

But Pettersson also figured on the Penguins' third goal, smartly presenting himself as a trailing target to clear space for the top line before Dumoulin eventually scored. That earned an assist.

He also did this, but it's got to be watched closely:

All kinds of awareness there. Operating blindly and taking a hit to make the play, he softly touches that puck deftly on his forehand back to Teddy Blueger. And this, unlike the goal, he didn't dare downplay.

"That was nice," he'd recall with a grin. "I've got to be a little careful there, obviously, but Teddy called for it and I saw him coming over my shoulder."

To keep reminding: This kid's 22.

THE BAD

This team-wide defending ... blah.

A day after giving up five goals to the Flames, they gave up five more to the Rangers, plus 44 shots, plus 71 attempted shots, plus 18 of the game's 30 high-danger scoring chances. If that were a scarcity over the course of this season, it could be forgiven. In actual context, it can't.

I mean, DeSmith gave up five goals and played well.

"It kind of had a feel from the second period that it was going to be a high-scoring kind of game," DeSmith would say with a slight shrug. "We battled through it."

The battle needs to be solidified on the back end. And not necessarily by the defensemen. The bulk of the lapses this weekend were by the forwards.

THE PLAY

I mentioned that Malkin had an obscene goal, right?

OK, cool. Because I recall reading somewhere earlier this weekend that it might benefit the Penguins if he becomes more productive five-on-five, and he came through with not one but two such goals.

Good for him, better for the team.

THE CALL

Sullivan made one lineup switch before the game and another during that same fateful second intermission.

Beforehand, he scratched Garrett Wilson for the first time in six weeks, and I'd have to presume that had at least a little to do with his early, ill-advised turnover in the Calgary game. Dominik Simon returned after two games out and logged 8:07 of innocuous ice time.

But the bigger impact, by far, came when Sullivan shuffled three forwards for the third period: Nick Bjugstad, who hadn't gotten anything going alongside Malkin and Phil Kessel, was moved from second-line right winger to third-line center. Blueger, in turn, dropped from third-line left winger to fourth-line left winger. And Aston-Reese was returned to Malkin and Kessel, having shown chemistry with them earlier this season, assisting on both of Malkin's goals.

The latter had been set up as Plan B before the game.

"If we didn't see any development of that line," Sullivan said of the original Malkin trio, "then maybe we'd try Nick at third-line center. We think Zach has played extremely well since coming off his injury, and it ended up working for the line. I thought they had a really good third period."

THE OTHER SIDE

Anyone seen Henrik Lundqvist?

The Rangers' decision to start Georgiev here over their franchise icon was terribly transparent: Lundqvist's 0-5-3 in his past eight starts against the Penguins, including the infamous overturned net, and the most recent encounter saw six goals pumped past him on 18 shots.

Not that Georgiev was any more at fault on his goals than DeSmith at the other end. At least not in his teammates' eyes after they conceded 41 of the game's 85 shots.

"I don't like to take anything from losses," Mats Zuccarello answered when asked about scoring twice for New York. "It's just a tough loss for us. We gave the game away there with three quick goals. When you lose hockey games, you don't really care how you do personally."

The Rangers went 7-4-1 in their previous 12 games but have alternated wins and losses during their past six (3-2-1). They are 10 points behind the Hurricanes for the second wild card.

Also of concern to the visitors: Neal Pionk, the defenseman Crosby accidentally struck near the eye for the four-minute minor, was kept in the locker room for the third period for what Quinn called "precautionary reasons." He suggested the injury wasn't serious.

THE DATA

• This marked the fourth time in franchise history the Penguins got four-plus goals from defensemen in a game, the first since Dec. 26, 1990, against the Capitals in Landover, Md., where they got two from Paul Coffey, plus one each from Peter Taglianetti and the late Zarley Zalapski.

• This game marked the first time Malkin and Letang each scored multiple goals. They've been teammates for 724 NHL games, including playoffs.

• Crosby's three assists, his second three-point output in as many days, extended his points streak to five games in which he's put up two goals and nine assists.

• Sullivan's now 14-5-1 against the Rangers, including the playoffs. Remember when they were the barrier?

• Malkin's now nine points shy of 1,000.

THE INJURIES

• Olli Maatta, defenseman, has a separated left shoulder and is expected to miss a month. He's on IR.

THE LINEUPS

Sullivan's eventual lines/pairings for this game:

Guentzel--Crosby--Rust

Aston-Reese--Malkin--Kessel

McCann--Bjugstad--Hornqvist

Blueger--Cullen--Simon

Dumoulin--Letang

Johnson--Schultz