CHICAGO -- Todd Reirden said that he thought the Penguins' third period against the Blackhawks on Tuesday was "one of our stronger periods of the year."
The Penguins entered the third period trailing, 2-0, after second-period goals from Chicago's Jujhar Khaira and Seth Jones.
The Penguins dominated the third period, outshooting the Blackhawks by a 20-5 margin, and battled back to force overtime after two goals from Jeff Carter.
"I don't think we were overly pleased with how the first two periods went," Reirden said afterward. "I thought that our urgency and desperation went to a different level (in the third period)."
"I think we just had to come back to our identity," P.O Joseph said of that comeback. "I think that's what we showed in the third, a lot of character."
That strong effort to get to overtime guaranteed them at least one point in the standings. A failure in the shootout gave the Penguins a 3-2 loss and left that second point on the table for the third time this season.
Jonathan Toews opened the shootout and beat Tristan Jarry five-hole.
Jake Guentzel was stopped with a glove save by Marc-Andre Fleury on his attempt, then Jarry stopped Patrick Kane with a glove-side save of his own to start the second round. Kris Letang was stopped by Fleury's pad save on his shot, then a bar-down goal from Alex DeBrincat gave the Blackhawks the win.
The Penguins have been in three shootouts this season, and have lost all three. The only players to score in those shootouts are Carter (1-for-1), Bryan Rust (1-for-1), and Guentzel (1-for-3).
Obviously, the Penguins are still missing one of their top shootout performers in Sidney Crosby, who has a 40 percent shootout success rate in his career. It also would have helped Tuesday to get a goal from Guentzel, who has a 54.6 percent success rate in his career. Letang fell to 0-for-3 in the shootout this season, despite a 33.8 percent career success rate.
Jarry, though, especially has to be better.
Before this season, Jarry had faced 20 total shots in shootouts and allowed six goals, for a save percentage of .700, just above the average for goaltenders around the league int he shootout.
This season, Jarry has faced 10 shootout attempts, stopped just three of them.
It's a small sample size, but he needs to be better.
"It's an area that we need to continue to work at and improve, and there's ways to do that," Reirden said of the team's shootout record. "We'll be exhausting all options to do that."
Jarry does deserve credit for even getting the Penguins to the shootout. He made 30 saves on 32 shots in the game, including one on the Blackhawks' lone shot in overtime that came off of a 2-on-0 with DeBrincat and Kane.
"I didn't love our overtime," Reirden said. "So I thought he helped us get a chance to be in the shootout, for sure."
The Penguins currently sit last in the Metropolitan Division with a 4-3-4 record for 12 points. Had they won those three shootout games they lost, they'd be sitting in fourth place with game in hand over the third-place Capitals.
It's November, and much too early to be looking that closely into the standings. But it's shaping up to be a tight race in the Metropolitan Division standings, and not securing these shootout points could end up coming back to bite the Penguins later in the season.
Obviously, a goaltender's shootout performance doesn't matter come playoff time, when 20-minute overtime periods replace the skills competition that is the shootout. But it's going to be hard to clinch a playoff spot by leaving points on the table like this.
I'm not sure what the answer is. Casey DeSmith (who is ironically currently sporting a mustache for allowing too many goals in the Mustache Boy shootout drill in practice) has just four games of shootout experience at the NHL level, but has fared well, stopping 11 of 14 shots faced for a .786 save percentage. I don't think that throwing him in cold, straight off the bench in the event of a shootout to replace Jarry is a realistic option.
Jarry just has to be better.
MORE FROM THE GAME
• Carter's first goal came off of this play between Carter and Guentzel that didn't quite go as planned, but still ended up in the back of the net just the same:
"We talk about plays before the drop, before we go out there," Carter said of that goal. "It wasn't clean, what we were trying to do. I was just trying to get to the net and I saw him kind of spinning and throwing it and just tried to get my stick in there. I got a piece of it."
• Carter's second goal moved him into elite company. It was his 402nd career goal, moving him into the top 100 goal-scorers in NHL history. I have more on that here.
"It means I'm old," he quipped when I asked him about reaching the milestone. "I played a lot of hockey. Something pretty special to me, I guess. I didn't realize I was that close. A lot of great players in this game, and hopefully here I can just keep building on that."
• Carter, naturally, also led the Penguins in shots on goal with seven. He attempted 10 shots, with five coming from the high-danger areas of the ice.
• Guentzel, unnaturally, led the Penguins in hits with six.
• Blackhawks interim coach Derek King is now 2-0 to start his career, having replaced Jeremy Colliton behind Chicago's bench on Saturday. Carter thought that it was a different Blackhawks team compared to when they beat the Blackhawks in Pittsburgh 5-2 on Oct. 16
"A lot of changes here for them in the last few days," Carter said. "They had a lot of energy. They came out, they played hard, they've got a lot of skill over there. They've got guys that play really hard. They were the better team for two periods."
• The Penguins haven't won a game in Chicago since Feb. 27, 2009. They won that game 5-4, with goals coming from Jordan Staal, Chris Kunitz, Miroslav Satan and Maxime Talbot, followed by Evgeni Malkin scoring the game-winner in overtime. Fleury made 41 saves for the Penguins in that win (one save shy of his total in this game). Toews scored a hat trick for the Blackhawks (three goals more than his goal total this season).
Rust obviously hasn't been around for the entirety of this losing streak in Chicago, and he's not quite sure what might be the cause of it.
"Sometimes, things work out in funny ways where either buildings or teams you're playing against, or for shooters that goalies are playing against, things either go great, or they don't go great. And I think that might be the case here. Obviously, we've had some games in the past, especially when I've been here, when games have gone horribly wrong. And then there's games like tonight where we fight back and there's games close, and we almost get that win. But who knows, I guess. Hockey's a funny game and it just kind of works out that way sometimes."
• The music at the United Center feels like that scene in Back to the Future when Marty McFly cranked up all the settings on the speakers and blew the thing up. The bass here vibrated my bag of Doritos across the press box table. It was wild.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
THE THREE STARS
As selected at United Center:
1. Seth Jones, Blackhawks
2. Marc-Andre Fleury, Blackhawks
3. Jeff Carter, 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.
• Defenseman Marcus Pettersson is out of COVID protocol and has resumed skating with Hennes.
• Defenseman Chad Ruhwedel is out of COVID protocol and has resumed skating with Hennes.
• Defenseman Brian Dumoulin tested positive for COVID last Wednesday and is asymptomatic.
• Forward Sidney Crosby tested positive for COVID last Wednesday and is symptomatic.
• Coach Mike Sullivan tested positive for COVID last Thursday and is symptomatic.
THE LINEUPS
Reirden’s lines and pairings:
Jake Guentzel - Jeff Carter - Bryan Rust
Jason Zucker - Evan Rodrigues - Kasperi Kapanen
Zach Aston-Reese - Teddy Blueger - Brock McGinn
Drew O'Connor - Brian Boyle - Danton Heinen
Mike Matheson - Kris Letang
P.O Joseph - John Marino
Juuso Riikola - Mark Friedman
And for Derek King's Blackhawks:
Alex DeBrincat - Kirby Dach - Patrick Kane
Dominik Kubalik - Jonathan Toews - Jujhar Khaira
Adam Gaudette - Dylan Strome - Mike Hardman
Philipp Kurashev - Ryan Carpenter - Reese Johnson
Riley Stillman - Seth Jones
Jake McCabe - Connor Murphy
Calvin De Haan - Erik Gustafsson
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins will practice in Cranberry at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday in preparation for Thursday's game against the Panthers at PPG Paints Arena.
THE CONTENT
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