ST. LOUIS -- Offer the Penguins a point before this game started, and they just might have been tempted to accept it.
A bit grudgingly, perhaps, but they understood that they were in a hostile venue and facing a big team that plays a heavy game, the kind that has made their lives miserable at times this season.
And that would have been before they found themselves on the wrong side of a 5-on-3 power play just 35 seconds after the opening faceoff.
Now, teams don't expect to win a game in the first couple of minutes, but the Penguins realized they could lose this one before they got another even-strength shift.
"If they get one or two goals there early, it's a different game," Mike Matheson said.
And likely not one with the kind of happy ending the Penguins got when Bryan Rust buried a shot behind Blues goalie Ville Husso during the fourth round of a shootout, giving them a 3-2 victory Thursday night at Enterprise Center.
For Rust to score a timely goal isn't much of a rarity, but being assessed two minors in the first 35 seconds of a game is. Indeed, Mike Sullivan -- who has been around the NHL for decades as a player and coach -- said this was the first time he's witnessed it.
Neither call was controversial -- Kris Letang was called for delay of game just nine seconds into the game, and Jeff Carter was sent off for high-sticking David Perron 26 seconds later -- but that didn't lessen their potential impact.
To be fair, the sequence that followed those penalties did have an impact. Just not the one many anticipated when the St. Louis power play, which entered the game as the third-most efficient in the NHL, was presented with 94 seconds of a two-man advantage.
But the Penguins limited the Blues to three shots during the 5-on-3 and Tristan Jarry made a couple of excellent saves, catapulting the Penguins to momentum they sustained for much of the evening.
Sure, there was a bit of a hiccup late in the second period and early in the third when the Blues tied the game, 2-2, but even that came with an upside for Sullivan.
"The most encouraging part for me was, when they tied the game up, it didn't affect our mindset, as far as playing on our toes and getting back to the game that we think gives us the best chance to win," he said. "We got right back to work."
The payoff for their efforts didn't come until Round 4 of the shootout. Before Rust got his chance, Jarry denied Jordan Kyrou, Perron, Vladimir Tarasenko and Ryan O'Reilly, while Jake Guentzel, Sidney Crosby and Letang had failed to score on Husso.
Rust had watched his three teammate fail to score after taking a circuitous route to the net before shooting. He opted for a different approach, skating hard down the slot before beating Husso, but suggested it wasn't because the others' strategy hadn't worked out.
Rather, he stuck with something that had paid off for him in the past.
"I have a similar thought process pretty much every time I go down there," Rust said. "There are a few things I look for, and I was able to pick my spots."
In this case, his spot an opening on Husso's glove side.
For most of the first two periods, there was little reason to believe the Penguins would need a shootout goal. Or an overtime goal. Or even one for insurance during regulation. For after surviving their early short-handed crisis, they controlled play for most of the first two periods, limiting the St. Louis to 10 shots on goal by the midpoint of the second.
When Matheson threw a shot past Husso from outside the left dot at 10:52 of the second, building on a lead Chad Ruhwedel had given them with his goal at 14:42 of the first, the Penguins seemed to have a chokehold on the game, so they could have been deflated when the Blues pulled even on an Ivan Barbashev goal at 1:49 of the third.
Instead, they quickly regained the momentum and had an edge in play for much of the third, showing the kind of resilience that should serve them well in the high-stakes games to come.
"It definitely feels good to play a good, hard game, control the game for most of the time, deal with a little bit of adversity but still get the win," Rust said. "That's going to be big for our group, especially down the stretch here."
So will the goaltending of Jarry, just as it's been since the start of the season. He turned aside 23 of 25 shots during regulation and overtime, and all four he faced in the shootout.
Rust distilled his assessment of Jarry's work to a succinct phrase.
"Fantastic," he said. "Once again."
Quality goaltending from Jarry has been a constant for the Penguins this season; taking points from teams that are bigger and more physical hasn't been.
On this night, though, the Penguins showed that they can counter an opponent's superior size with skating, sound positional play and efficient puck movement.
Combine those elements with a willingness to work all over the ice, and a lot of things become possible.
"If we put that kind of game on the ice consistently," Sullivan said, "we're going to give ourselves a chance to win on most nights."
Even the ones when they get down by two men in the first 35 seconds.
MORE FROM THE GAME
• The Penguins launched no fewer than 45 shots -- the most St. Louis has allowed at home this season -- at Husso, and their total actually could have been significantly higher if they hadn't opted to pass rather than putting pucks on goal at times.
"We were talking about it on the bench, what seemed all night long," Sullivan said. "We talked about it in between periods. Sometimes, it's not a bad thing to force a goaltender to have to make a save. The odd one goes in. The other aspect of it is, it creates a next-play opportunity. For me, nothing breaks coverage down better than a shot on goal because decision-making has to take place. If there's any hesitation in that decision-making, opportunity presents itself.
"I'd like to see us put the puck on the net a little bit more. ... We have some really offensively gifted players and we don't want to get in the way of their instincts. We don't want to take the stick out of their hands. But certainly, I thought there were a number of instances tonight where we could have put a puck on the net and just give us the opportunity to create that next play."
• The victory moved the Penguins into sole possession of second place in the Metropolitan Division, two points ahead of the third-place New York Rangers and four behind the first-place Hurricanes, who have two games in hand.
• Crosby was held without a point for the first time in 11 games.
• Sullivan said coaches give players some information about facing a particular goalie in a shootout, but limit it so that players don't over-think situations.
"Players are at their best when they're instinctive," he said. "When they take what the game gives them and they trust their instincts. ... We do give them a little bit of information, but we're very selective."
• The Penguins made it through a demanding 12-game stretch, during which all but two of their opponents will be playoff teams, with a 6-5-1 record.
• Although the Penguins were outhit, 30-17, Matheson delivered the most memorable one of the night when he flattened Blues defenseman Colton Parayko, who checks in at 6-foot-6, 228 pounds, about 3 1/2 minutes into overtime. Matheson was credited with a team-high four hits.
• The Penguins are 8-4-2 in their past 14 games against the Blues and have won four of their past five games at Enterprise Center.
• Matheson had a strong game, but was roasted by Perron on the first Blues goal, as he carried the puck down the left side, then slipped past Matheson before cutting across the slot and flipping a shot by Jarry. "That first goal was completely my fault," Matheson said.
• The victory was Jarry's 30th in 2021-22, allowing him to join Marc-Andre Fleury, Matt Murray and Tom Barrasso as the only goalies in franchise history to record that many in a season. "That's something you don't really think about, but when it happens, it's pretty cool," Jarry said.
GETTY
Teammates congratulate Tristan Jarry after he stopped all four shots he faced during the shootout.
THE ESSENTIALS
THE THREE STARS
As selected at Enterprise Center:
1. Tristan Jarry, Penguins G
2. Ville Husso, Blues G
3. Mike Matheson, Penguins D
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE INJURIES
• Brock McGinn, left winger, is week-to-week because of an unspecified upper-body injury.
• Jason Zucker, left winger, had core-muscle surgery Jan. 25 and is week-to-week. He has resumed skating.
• Zach Aston-Reese, winger, who sat out the Penguins' loss in Nashville Tuesday because of an unspecified illness, was well enough to take part in the game-day skate, but was held out of the game because he still is not fully over his ailment.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Guentzel-Crosby-Rodrigues
Heinen-Malkin-Rust
Zohorna-Carter-Kapanen
Boyle-Blueger-Simon
Dumoulin-Letang
Matheson-Marino
Pettersson-Ruhwedel
And for Craig Berube's Blues:
Saad-O'Reilly-Perron
Kyrou-Schenn-Tarasenko
Brown-Barbashev-Buchnevich
MacEachern-Sundqvist-Toropchenko
Scandella-Parayko
Krug-Faulk
Mikkola-Bortuzzo
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins are scheduled to practice Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern in Scottsdale, Ariz. before facing the Coyotes Saturday at 5:08 p.m. Eastern at Gila River Arena.
THE CONTENT
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