TAMPA, Fla, -- The Penguins were missing over a quarter of their regular skaters entering Tuesday's season-opening game in Tampa.
They weren't small losses, either.
Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin remain sidelined while recovering from offseason surgeries. Jake Guentzel and Zach Aston-Reese are both working toward returns after contracting COVID-19 during training camp. Mike Matheson is dealing with a lower-body injury.
That's $30.8 million in cap hits watching the game from the press box or from back in Pittsburgh. Of the 196 goals the Penguins scored as a team last season, that group alone accounted for 69 of them, or just over 35 percent.
The depleted Penguins' roster was tasked with opening the season against the back-to-back defending Stanley Cup champions, following the Lightning's emotional banner-raising ceremony.
Most probably would have predicted a blowout final score, with the winners showing total control and dominance throughout the game.
And that's what happened.
Just not by the team most would have predicted.
If it's possible to call a win a "statement win" in the first game of the season, that's what the Penguins' 6-2 defeat of the Lightning was on Tuesday night at Amalie Arena.
Over the course of an 82-game season, this game will count like any other win, just two points in the standings. But what it meant to the team to show this resiliency and spoil the champs' banner night can't be understated.
"It feels amazing," Dominik Simon said afterward. "It feels really good to win the first one. I think it was an emotional, big game. I'm really, really happy that we made it."
After the first 20 minutes, the teams were even on the scoresheet with no goals scored by either side. But the Penguins dominated. They led in shots, 14-7, and led in shot attempts, 22-15. They had four high-danger attempts, and the Lightning had none. The Penguins controlled 76.09 percent of the expected goals for in the period.
The difference-maker was Andrei Vasilevskiy, the Lightning goaltender who fell just a few votes shy of the Vezina last season.
Danton Heinen finally cracked Vasilevskiy 12 seconds into the middle frame, finishing after this feed from Jeff Carter from below the goal line:
"It was a good forecheck by Carts," Heinen said of the goal. "It was all him, he made a great play."
Three minutes later, Brian Boyle made it 2-0 off of a great play from Sam Lafferty:
The first two goals were scored by players taking advantage of the opportunity created by the Penguins' injury/illness situation -- Heinen, who wouldn't be on the top line if it weren't for Guentzel being out, and Boyle, who wouldn't even be on the team if it weren't for the multiple injuries at center.
"You see the guys that we have stepping up, with Boyler and Danton coming in," Tristan Jarry said. "They got huge goals for us. I think that motivates and brings a big positivity to our bench. I think it helped a lot and I think that helped us get the win."
The goal from Boyle was particularly meaningful, given his battle over the last year just to get back into the league after not having a team last season.
"I know our team was really excited for him, certainly our coaching staff was as well," Mike Sullivan said of Boyle's goal. "You know, Brian's just a real good pro. He's a great person. He was a big part of this win tonight."
The Penguins' opening goal of the third period came from an unlikely of a candidate as anyone, in Dominik Simon. It was his first regular-season goal since February of 2020:
"I was just coming out of the corner and I thought I'll just try to put it on the net," Simon said of his goal. "Saw a couple of bodies in there, so I put it in there, and it went into there. It was great that it went through all the bodies and just sunk in there."
For a team facing so much adversity right at the start of the season, the dominant win over the Lightning to start the season showed that it might be premature to just write this group of guys off.
"I think we proved that we can play against a team like Tampa," Simon said. "We can play well and we can win."
MORE FROM THE GAME
• After a full offseason of noise on the outside questioning whether he should be in a starting role, Jarry opened the season with a good performance, stopping 26 of 28 shots faced. Speaking about the win afterward though, he credited the work of his teammates in front of him.
"I think the team played well," he said. "They got a lot of shots early and I think that was our plan, put a lot of pressure on them. We knew they'd come out strong just with everything happening. I think we just wanted to play our game and try and get as many pucks to the net early. I think we were able to do that."
Heinen said that the Penguins had "a ton of confidence" in Jarry with his play.
• The team's player of the game award is another helmet this year. Crosby chose Jarry as the first recipient:
Bold in goal 💪 pic.twitter.com/Y77wK3y4d7
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) October 13, 2021
• Things got crazy in the third period when the teams started trading 6-on-5 or empty-net goals. The Lightning got on the board first when Cooper pulled Vasilevskiy in favor of the extra attacker with over six minutes remaining in the game, resulting in Anthony Cirelli getting a tip-in. With Vasilevskiy still pulled, Teddy Blueger responded 30-seconds later with an empty-net goal. Alex Killorn got the Lightning back within two goals with a 6-on-5 goal that was a one-timer from the left circle. Less than a minute later, Evan Rodrigues responded with an empty-net tally shot from deep in his own zone. With just under two minutes remaining in the game, Bryan Rust scored a third empty-net goal, shot from center ice.
It was only the fourth time in NHL history that a team scored more than two empty-net goals in a single game, and the first time a team has done so since 1984. These were the other three times that it's happened:
5 goals: Black Hawks, 4/5/70
3 goals: Oilers, 3/25/81
3 goals: Red Wings, 10/26/1984
• The single most noticeable player in the first period of the game was Mark Friedman, who was only in the game because of Matheson's injury. Just the plays he is able to make offensively and the aggressiveness that he brings is so evident:
That pairing with Chad Ruhwedel was really strong as a whole, and actually the most effective when it came to shot attempts for vs. allowed when they were on the ice.
• There was a funny moment midway through the third. Dumoulin lost his helmet in a battle in front of the net and had to vacate the ice. The stray helmet was pushed into Jarry's net. Ending a long period of extended offensive zone time for the Lightning, play finally went in the other direction and Jarry tried sending the helmet back to the Penguins' bench, but it didn't quite make it all the way there. The next Lightning rush up ice, what broke up the opportunity? Dumoulin's helmet.
• Three Penguins -- Heinen, Simon and Jason Zucker -- had four shots on goal, the most on the team.
• Brock McGinn led in hits (four) and blocked shots (three).
• The Penguins were credited with just one giveaway all game. Dumoulin was the culprit.
• Penguins skills coach Ty Hennes was on the bench for the game. He was behind the bench for one game last season when Todd Reirden was briefly in COVID protocol, and then was behind the bench again during the preseason. This was the first time he was behind the bench as a fourth member of the coaching staff in the regular season, though. A couple of times now Sullivan has spoken about the benefit of having Hennes on the bench. It sounds like it's not so much about what Hennes does on the bench during games, but more so the ability to have Hennes watch the game from ice-level and use that in the skills sessions he leads in practices. And having a third assistant coach behind the bench isn't exactly uncommon, about a third of the league does it.
• Former Penguins defenseman Ron Hainsey, who works for the NHLPA as the assistant to the executive director for special projects and development initiatives, was in the press box. He spent a while catching up with Crosby during one of the intermissions.
• The Kraken, Blackhawks (two), Bruins, Islanders and Devils had scouts in the building.
• If you read the morning skate story, you know that Carter boarded the plane to Florida with a massive bag of Welch's fruit snacks. I ran into Carter after the game and he said he ate them all within the first five minutes of being on the plane. Does Welch's do brand deals? Given that Carter was voted the No. 1 star of the game, I'd think the Welch's people should be on the phone with Carter's people first thing Wednesday.
• The band All Time Low performed outside the arena before the game, then entertained the crowd during the game by chugging beers on the videoboard. They were easily my second-favorite band when I was in middle school, and since then somehow keep showing up at my place of work. They're based in Baltimore, and when I was working at a frozen yogurt place in college they used to come in fairly often.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
THE THREE STARS
As selected at Amalie Arena:
1. Jeff Carter, Penguins
2. Danton Heinen, Penguins
3. Dominik Simon, Penguins
THE HIGHLIGHTS
(No, I don't know why the NHL decided to put Crosby in the thumbnail for the video.)
THE INJURIES
• Sidney Crosby expects to miss "hopefully a week or two" more after recovering from offseason wrist surgery. He's resumed practicing with the team.
• Evgeni Malkin is expected to miss the first two months of the season while recovering from his knee surgery.
• Zach Aston-Reese was diagnosed with COVID-19 during training camp, has been medically cleared and is practicing with the team. Sullivan said it's a possibility he could play on this trip.
• Jake Guentzel was diagnosed with COVID-19 during training camp and was asymptomatic, has been medically cleared and is practicing with the team. Sullivan also didn't rule out Guentzel for playing on this road trip.
• Mike Matheson is day-to-day with a lower-body issue. He is on the road trip and participated in Tuesday's morning skate, leaving halfway through.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Danton Heinen - Jeff Carter - Bryan Rust
Jason Zucker - Evan Rodrigues - Kasperi Kapanen
Brock McGinn - Teddy Blueger - Dominik Simon
Drew O'Connor - Brian Boyle - Sam Lafferty
Brian Dumoulin - Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson - John Marino
Mark Friedman - Chad Ruhwedel
And for Jon Cooper's Lightning:
Ondrej Palat - Brayden Point - Nikita Kucherov
Alex Killorn - Anthony Cirelli - Steven Stamkos
Mathieu Joseph - Ross Colton - Corey Perry
Pat Maroon - P-E Bellemare - Taylor Raddysh
Victor Hedman - Jan Rutta
Ryan McDonagh - Erik Cernak
Mikhail Sergachev - Zach Bogosian
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins will practice in Sunrise at 2 p.m. on Wednesday. Dejan and I will cover that. They'll play the Panthers on Thursday at 7 p.m.
THE CONTENT
Visit our team page for everything.
