ST LOUIS -- The Penguins needed this one, to say the very least.
Sure, they needed the two crucial points in the Eastern Conference standings, points that gave them 65 on the season and put them back into the playoff picture, leapfrogging the four-team tie of the Sabres, Red Wings, Panthers and Capitals, all at 64 points, for the second and final wild card spot.
But more importantly, they needed a win for the locker room's confidence. They were coming off a streak in which they lost to three divisional opponents, capped by a five-goal beating by the Oilers, being booed by the home fans, etc.
So this Saturday at Enterprise Center provided a good opportunity to rebound back into this last stretch of the NHL's regular season, one on which Bryan Rust pounced with his overtime goal to beat the Blues, 3-2, an outcome that doesn't sufficiently describe the degree to which the Penguins dominated the ice.
They blew out the Blues on the shot counter in the first period, but didn't have much to show for it. They peppered Jordan Binnington with 21 shots on goal and limited the Blues to just seven, but went to the locker rooms at first intermission with the score still tie, 0-0. The Blues' Pavel Buchnevich opened the scoring just 23 seconds into the middle frame.
A period in which the Penguins dominated by an absurd margin but weren't rewarded? An early-period goal that manages to erase all of the Penguins' hard work?
This had all the makings of a familiar storyline this season -- the Penguins did all the right things to win, but mistakes or those early-period goals threw it all away.
Not this time, though. The Penguins didn't let off the gas, and controlled play in each of the three periods of regulation. Tristan Jarry was playing the best game he's played since his return from injury, and it's tough to fault him for either the Buchnevich redirect or the Justin Faulk goal that came in the third period. Evgeni Malkin's line was dominant, Marcus Pettersson chipped in with his first goal of the season, and heck, even the third line was putting together a nice little game for the first time in ages.
When the game went to overtime, it had the makings of another all-too-familiar storyline this season, given the Penguins' overtime struggles earlier this season. But a Rust redirect of Malkin's slick feed just 76 seconds in -- the Penguins' first shot of overtime -- beat Binnington to secure the extra point. The Penguins are now 5-9 in games that go into an overtime or shootout, but have won three of their last four.
"(Jeff Petry) made a good play to get up there and I just tried to keep their guys on the ice," Rust said of the goal. "I made a move to the middle, took a shot that got blocked, and then Geno followed up and made a really nice play."
"It's good," a relieved-sounding Rust said afterward of the win. "Obviously, we wouldn't have liked to have given up that late one (by Faulk) but we showed a bit of resilience, just getting our heads back into it."
Mike Sullivan said that he just loved the Penguins' "will to win" in this one.
"I thought we generated a fair amount of scoring chances," Sullivan said. "I don't think we got rewarded for some of the effort out there. I thought the Blues played hard. I thought their goalie played really well. You know, there's a fine line between winning and losing in this league. For me, I just liked our stick-to-it-iveness tonight. It could have deflated us when they scored late in the game. But we kept playing. Our overtime was a strong effort is well."
This had feeling of the type of win that has the potential to turn the tide for the Penguins and get things back on track. The Blues aren't a Stanley Cup contender by any means this season, it wasn't a perfect win, and you'd still like to see some moves made to improve the roster ahead of the March 3 trade deadline. But getting a game in which the Penguins were dominant and didn't let up, were resilient after early-period or late goals, and you got a decent game out of the bottom-six and a good game out of Jarry, and then actually managed to close it out in overtime, is something that the Penguins can continue to build on.
"I think we had a really good effort tonight, and we got rewarded for it too," Pettersson told me afterward. "We've got to bring that feeling that we played throughout the whole game. Everybody stepped up for each other, it was a lot of fun to see."
Rust echoed a similar sentiment.
"I think how we played throughout the entire game, we were on our toes, we got a lot of chances," Rust said. "That's how we need to play here a lot moving forward."
MORE FROM THE GAME
• Kasperi Kapanen got claimed off waivers by the Blues prior to the game. More on that here. He didn't play for his new team since he didn't make the trip to St. Louis.
• Jarry finished with 25 saves, a good bounce-back game from him after getting pulled against Edmonton.
"I was disappointed with the result last game," Jarry said. "I just wanted to be better tonight. I think that was my sole goal, just to be better than last game and make sure that I'm taking steps every game that I'm playing. This time of year it's so tough, games are so close, and that's how it's going to be from here on in. You have to have your best game."
• Malkin and his line with Jason Zucker and Rust were dominant, and outshot opponents 9-1 when they were on the ice together. Malkin and Rust factored in on the opening and winning goals, with Malkin looking at Rust in amazement after the pass off the 2-on-1:
"He can be such a dominant player," Sullivan said of Malkin afterward. "He's just so gifted offensively. He's a horse, he's hard to handle when he's on top of his game. I thought he played an inspired game today."
• Pettersson got his obligatory "dad goal" following the birth of his son Frans. That was the fun subject of today's Freeze Frame.
• Buchnevich opened the scoring 23 seconds into the second period with a redirect of a Robert Thomas wrister flung at the net from the top of the left circle:
Jarry appeared to be frustrated speaking with the officials afterwards. He was asked after the game what sort of clarification he was seeking from the officials.
"Yeah, they didn't have clarification," Jarry said. "They said that they couldn't see anything, so that's why they called it a goal on the ice, so that's how it stands. They said it was a bad angle and they couldn't see anything because it was shot from the side. So it could have been a high stick, but they had no idea."
• The Blues' other goal that forced overtime came from Faulk with 2:27 left in regulation. It looked like a play that probably could have been blown dead prior to the goal, since the officials may have lost sight of it beforehand:
"We were down and bodies laying down there, just kind of in a normal situation, you don't go in there and kind of sniff around for something being down one," Faulk told reporters of that goal afterward. "You just kind of went to the net and hoped you can find it on the weak side. It just squirted free just enough to get a little bit on it."
• The Penguins again sent out Jeff Carter to take the opening draw in overtime then get straight off the ice, something they've done in overtimes for several weeks now. It makes sense. Carter is the Penguins' best faceoff centerman this season at 58.88%, significantly better than Sidney Crosby's 52.47%. Carter is also 6-4 (60%) in three-on-three draws, while Crosby is 3-8 (27.27%).
• Jan Rutta made his return from injury in the game, playing his first game since Jan. 14. He played an even 13 minutes on the third defense pairing, recording one shot on goal on three attempts, as well as one hit. When he and P.O Joseph were on the ice the Penguins controlled 83.33% of the shots on goal (10-2), the best ratio of any defense pairing in the game. Most of the faceoffs they were on the ice for (7 of 10) were in the offensive zone, though.
• Danton Heinen played his first game in nearly a month, replacing Kapanen on the third line with Carter and Brock McGinn. Heinen finished with three shots on goal on three shot attempts. That line actually had a pretty good game: When that line was on the ice the Penguins controlled 72.73% of all shot attempts (best on the team), 77.78% of all unblocked shot attempts (best on the team), 100% of all high-danger chances (best on the team) and 72.43% of all shots on goal. (second-best on the team). They weren't on the ice for any goals in either direction, but they played a part in driving the momentum in a positive way, which is a whole lot more than you can say about any of their recent games before this. They weren't sheltered either, getting only one faceoff start in the offensive zone but four in the defensive zone. I asked Sullivan afterward for his thoughts on that line and Heinen's impact in particular, and he had good things to say.
"I thought Danton played well," Sullivan said. "He has good offensive instincts. I thought he did a lot of the little things -- good on the wall, he didn't play a high-risk game, he was strong on pucks, he can get in on the forecheck. He has instincts -- he can make plays, he's a scoring threat himself. I thought Carts' line had one of their better games as of late."
• With Kapanen gone from the second power play unit, the Penguins went with a two-defenseman setup with Pettersson, Petry, Rust, Carter and Zucker.
• Teddy Blueger, who has one goal this season in 43 games and is scoreless in his last 32, hit the crossbar in the second period. The guy remains snakebitten.
• Brian Dumoulin and Pettersson tied for the lead in blocked shots with four each.
• Petry led in hits with five.
• Malkin and Jake Guentzel tied for the lead with six shots on goal. Right behind them? Dumoulin, with five. This was one of his overall better games as of late.
• There was a bit of a scrum midway through the second period, with players ending up on top of other players, and Rust taking on two Blues at once. Zucker was in the middle, and he looked to have the start of a black eye in the locker room afterward.
• Per PuckPedia, the Penguins have enough cap space now to take on $1.8 million in cap hits. Since they're not using long-term injured reserve for the first time all year, they also are finally banking any of that unused cap space on a daily basis. If they stick with this current roster up until the NHL's March 3 trade deadline, they can take on $2.1 million in cap hits at that time with the banked cap space. So while they can finally afford to recall players from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, it would limit their flexibility going into the trade deadline
• A handful of scouts here for this one: Blackhawks, Devils, Capitals and Canucks.
• Great press box snacks here. First off, the coffee station has four different syrup flavors, and I don't recall seeing flavor syrups in any other building. Canned Pepsi products, great brownies and peanut butter cookies, plus pretzels, potato chips, trail mix, nuts, Starburst, peanut M&Ms, Fireballs (the candy, not the whiskey), Lemonheads, and Dum-Dum lollipops. I had nine of the latter. A rare A+.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE THREE STARS
As selected at Enterprise Center:
1. Marcus Pettersson, Penguins D
2. Jordan Binnington, Blues G
3. Bryan Rust, Penguins RW
THE INJURIES
• Forward Ryan Poehling has missed the last six games with the same nagging upper-body injury that he's been dealing with off and on since December. He didn't practice on Friday but he did make the trip to St. Louis.
• Defenseman Mark Friedman suffered an undisclosed injury on Feb. 11. He participated in Friday' practice in a non-contact capacity and also made the trip to St. Louis.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Jake Guentzel - Sidney Crosby - Rickard Rakell
Jason Zucker - Evgeni Malkin - Bryan Rust
Brock McGinn - Jeff Carter - Danton Heinen
Drew O'Connor - Teddy Blueger - Josh Archibald
Brian Dumoulin - Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson - Jeff Petry
P.O Joseph - Jan Rutta
And for Craig Berube's Blues:
Pavel Buchnevich - Justin Thomas - Ivan Barbashev
Brandon Saad - Brayden Schenn - Jordan Kyrou
Alexey Toropchenko - Logan Brown - Sammy Blais
Nathan Walker - Tyler Pitlick
Nick Leddy - Colton Parayko
Marco Scandella - Justin Faulk
Torey Krug - Robert Bortuzzo
Tyler Tucker
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins play 6 p.m. Sunday against the Lightning at PPG Paints Arena. I'll be there with Danny Shirey before heading out on the Nashville-Tampa-Sunrise road trip with Dejan Kovacevic.
THE MULTIMEDIA
THE CONTENT
Visit our team page for everything.