For just about every Penguins win this season, the story has been the same.
"Next man up" mentality. Getting it done by committee. Contributions from unlikely sources. Players taking advantage of elevated roles due to the Penguins' injury or illness circumstances.
Those circumstances haven't improved and, if anything, have gotten worse. The Penguins entered Thursday's game against the Flyers at PPG Paints Arena attempting to end a three-game losing streak despite still having Bryan Rust and Evgeni Malkin on the injured list, and Sidney Crosby, Brian Dumoulin, Chad Ruhwedel, Marcus Pettersson, and Mike Sullivan in COVID protocol after they tested positive for COVID-19.
That "next man up" mentality definitely applied behind the bench, with assistant coach Todd Reirden stepping into the role of head coach for the time being.
But on the ice, the biggest contributions in the 3-2 overtime win came from the more usual suspects. The stars played like stars.
That's especially true in the case of Kris Letang, who was playing in his first game since testing positive for COVID-19 on Oct. 25.
On Wednesday, Letang spoke of that experience, saying that he had "pretty much all the symptoms" for about four or five days.
"Congestion, headaches, pressure in the forehead, coughing, lost taste and smell, body aches, a lot of pain in the lower back and stuff like that," he said, saying that when he was back on the ice on his own for the first time on Monday he could still feel the effects in his lungs.
Letang was coming into this game with only two days of solo skates and one practice under his belt since recovering. As a result, Reirden said in his pregame media availability that they would monitor his ice time, not yet knowing how he would react to the grind of a full game.
It was quickly clear that Letang wasn't going to see his minutes slashed in this game. He led the team in ice time as per usual in the first period, playing 9:45. By the end of the night, he had logged 28:50, including the very first shift of overtime.
Letang made use of that time, too. He was tied for the team lead with four shots on goal, and was No. 2 in shot attempts with nine. He capped off the night with the overtime-winner, tucking the puck past Carter Hart on a wraparound. The officials missed the puck crossing the line in the moment, but a video review confirmed that the puck had completely crossed the line, giving the Penguins the (somewhat anticlimactic) win:
Letang said that in the moment, he knew it was at least close to being over the line, though he wasn't 100 percent sure.
"In the scrum, I told the referee right away. I said, 'You should check it,' " he said.
Letang was clearly exhausted after having that kind of workload in his first game back, and his teammates admired that kind of performance out of him.
"He does it all," Jake Guentzel said of Letang. "I mean, it doesn't look like he missed a beat. The guy does it all for us, and just to see him get rewarded with that goal was pretty special. Just a leader for us, and a guy that we can count on in all situations. Definitely, he brought it all night tonight."
Full credit has to go to Tristan Jarry for his role in even getting this game to overtime.
The Penguins opened the scoring early, with Brock McGinn getting a tip on a Mike Matheson shot from the left point just 16 seconds into the game. For the rest of the period, though, the Penguins were clearly outmatched and Jarry was tested early. The Penguins were outshot 17-8 in the early onslaught, but Jarry kept the Flyers off the scoresheet until Travis Konecny's power play goal in the second period. He faced a total of 38 shots and stopped 36 of them, including two in overtime.
Reirden and Letang both fittingly chose the same word to describe Jarry's showing in this game: Outstanding.
"We made a strong push as a team to start the game," Reirden said. "Then I thought they really tilted the ice on us a little bit there. A little bit of it was self inflicted by some poor puck management. I thought Tristan was outstanding tonight. All game, really solid, under control. He looked poised."
"Our goalie tonight was outstanding," Letang said. "You know, Jars kept us in the game the entire night."
Guentzel stepped up in a big way, scoring his second goal of the season and his first since his season debut against the Panthers in the Penguins' second game of the season.
Guentzel whiffed on the initial shot, causing defenseman Justin Braun to react. His second attempt was a real muffin of a shot, but he got it off so quickly that Braun wasn't able to recover in time to defend it, and Hart wasn't able to get a pad on it:
"Just kind of a flukey goal," Guentzel said after. "You go on those streaks, it's just what it takes to find the back of the net there. It definitely felt nice, hopefully they can keep coming now."
With so many players and the coach in COVID protocol, and Rust and Malkin not yet ready to return from injury, the Penguins are going to remain shorthanded for the near future. To get through this stretch, they'll need their depth players to step up the way they have in earlier games. And they'll need more efforts like these out of their stars.
"I'm really proud that the players played as hard as they did for us tonight," Reirden said.
Jeanine Leech
Todd Reirden in his role as acting head coach.
MORE FROM THE GAME
• My favorite rivalry in hockey is Mark Friedman vs. the city of Philadelphia.
Going back to last season after the Penguins claimed Friedman off of waivers from Philadelphia, those last games he played against the Flyers, there was obviously some bad blood between him and his former teammates. In one game, Friedman scored his first goal against his former club, and seemed to make a point to celebrate in front of the Flyers' bench while staring players down. Nolan Patrick boarded Friedman in that game, and Friedman was later injured in a collision with Patrick. In the last meeting, Friedman fought Joel Farabee, and Shayne Gostisbehere was suspended for two games after a dangerous, cheap shot boarding infraction on Friedman after Friedman scored an empty-net goal.
Nobody involved has ever spoke publicly on why there seems to be such animosity. I've seen fans suggest that it might be because of Friedman's comments to the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle last season in which he said he was now on the "good side" of the rivalry and called the city of Philadelphia dirty. But that's not it. That came after he had already played against the Flyers and there was clear bad blood, and I really don't think that someone like Gostisbehere was risking suspension to defend the honor of the city of Philadelphia because someone called it dirty. That doesn't make any sense.
Through the first two periods of this game, there wasn't a ton of action between Friedman and his former teammates, and I was starting to think that maybe the beef just existed between Friedman and Patrick (who is now playing for Vegas) and Gostisbehere (who is now playing for Arizona).
Then things started to pick up in the third period, and it was clear that there are still no friends here.
It started early in the third period, just after a whistle blew, and just out of frame on the broadcast. Konecny gave Friedman a little shove after the whistle, and Friedman shoved Konecny straight into the glass with a little extra force. Shortly after that when play resumed, Nicolas Aube-Kubel got called for roughing Friedman:
Midway through the third, there was another stoppage and a TV timeout. Scott Laughton was skating through center ice heading back to the Flyers' bench, and Friedman was trailing him, clearly chirping him along the way. Brian Boyle actually saw what was happening, came over and pulled Friedman back, and escorted him away from the situation while seemingly giving him a light talking-to. It was a real dad move.
At the next stoppage, Friedman was back at it, trading shoves and words with some former teammates on his way off the ice. He's very good at getting under the skin of opponents, and that seems to go double for his former teammates.
• Letang and Matheson were on the top pairing, an interesting combination given how often both players tend to take risks offensively. They were each credited with three giveaways a piece in this game, leading the team in that category. Matheson had the only giveaway that was costly on the scoresheet, leading to Laughton's third-period goal. They balanced those risks out, though, with offensive contributions of their own, and were the Penguins' most effective pairing in terms of shot attempts for vs. allowed when on the ice at five-on-five.
"I thought we did a lot of good things offensively," Letang said of the pairing. "I thought we did a good job breaking out of our zone. We had some odd-man rushes, we gave up some chances. I don't think I played my best game. I thought that I need to improve a lot. It was a long time, 10 days, so I have to be better. And I think it's going to make our pairing better also. But it was fun. Mike is a really smart player out there. He's really good, skates like the wind. So it's fun to play with a guy like that."
• Zach Aston-Reese led the Penguins in hits with eight. Juuso Riikola was second with five, including this one on Farabee:
• P.O Joseph made his season debut, playing 17:02 on the second pairing alongside John Marino. He was a plus-1, with one shot on goal, one hit, and one interference penalty. He led the Penguins in takeaways with five. The only other Penguins players with more than one takeaway were Kasperi Kapanen (three) and Aston-Reese (two).
• Guentzel led in blocked shots with four. Only Boyle and Friedman had more than one among the rest of the Penguins players, each being credited with two.
• Jeff Carter played in his 1,100th NHL game. Among active players with at least 1,100 games played, Carter ranks No. 2 in goals with 400, trailing only Alex Ovechkin's 669. Carter is nearing another big milestone as well. At 402 goals, he'll move into the top 100 goal-scorers in league history.
• With Crosby and Dumoulin on the COVID list, the Penguins were back to having three alternate captains. Letang and Carter had 'A's on their jerseys as usual, but this time the third one went to Boyle, despite Guentzel and Jason Zucker being alternate captains in the past this season. This was the first time Boyle had an 'A' on his jersey as a member of the Penguins, and I thought it was fitting that it came on the Penguins' Hockey Fights Cancer night, given that Boyle is a cancer survivor.
• The Hockey Fights Cancer jerseys worn in warmups, along with nameplates, signed pucks, and more are being auctioned here, with proceeds benefitting the Mario Lemieux Foundation and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. The "Pittsburgh is Stronger than Cancer" shirts worn off the ice by players (and by us in our Podcast on Fifth Ave episode this week!) can be found here, with proceeds benefitting the Mario Lemieux Foundation.
• The Penguins are undefeated in the Todd Reirden era (1-0).
• There were 17,037 tickets sold, which is 94 percent capacity.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
THE THREE STARS
As selected at PPG Paints Arena:
1. Kris Letang, Penguins
2. Jake Guentzel, Penguins
3. Tristan Jarry, Penguins
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE INJURIES
• Forward Evgeni Malkin is expected to miss the first two months of the season while recovering from his knee surgery. He has been skating with Ty Hennes.
• Forward Bryan Rust was injured in the Penguins' second game of the season and is considered week-to-week with a lower-body injury. He has resumed skating with the team in a non-contact capacity.
• Defenseman Marcus Pettersson tested positive for COVID on Monday and is symptomatic.
• Defenseman Chad Ruhwedel tested positive for COVID on Monday and is symptomatic.
• Defenseman Brian Dumoulin tested positive for COVID on Wednesday and is asymptomatic.
• Forward Sidney Crosby tested positive for COVID on Wednesday and is symptomatic.
• Coach Mike Sullivan tested positive for COVID on Thursday and is symptomatic.
THE LINEUPS
Reirden’s lines and pairings:
Jake Guentzel - Jeff Carter - Danton Heinen
Jason Zucker - Evan Rodrigues - Kasperi Kapanen
Zach Aston-Reese - Teddy Blueger - Brock McGinn
Drew O'Connor - Brian Boyle - Dominik Simon
Mike Matheson - Kris Letang
P.O Joseph - John Marino
Juuso Riikola - Mark Friedman
And for Alain Vigneault's Flyers
Claude Giroux - Sean Couturier - Travis Konecny
Joel Farabee - Derick Brassard - Cam Atkinson
Oskar Lindblom - Scott Laughton - Jeremy van Riemsdyk
Nicolas Aube-Kubel - Nate Thompson - Zack MacEwen
Ivan Provorov - Justin Braun
Travis Sanheim - Rasmus Ristolainen
Keith Yandle - Nick Seeler
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins will practice in Cranberry at noon Friday in preparation for Saturday's game against the Wild at PPG Paints Arena.
THE CONTENT
Visit our team page for everything.
