PENGUINS

The first period of the Penguins' 5-2 loss to the Flyers was perhaps the most encouraging period they've played of this series.

After struggling to generate much offense, and having an awful power play in the first two games of the series, they had actually started to turn things around. They outshot the Flyers -- a slim 11-10 margin, but outshooting them nonetheless. They had four chances from the high-danger areas of the ice. They finally capitalized on the power play for the first time all series, with Evgeni Malkin's goal ending a run of seven scoreless opportunities in this series and giving the Penguins a lead heading into the first intermission.

"We were simple and hard," Bryan Rust told me of what he thought was working so well early in this game. "We need more of that. We got pucks in, established O-zone game, worked them down a bit. A simple, hard game."

What changed?

"The game turned into a bit of a WWE match in the second period, and they fed off that," Rust said.

"It turned into a bit of a circus," was how Sidney Crosby put it.

"You can call it what you want," Erik Karlsson said. "But they obviously won that battle."

Line brawl, scrum, melee, kerfuffle, whatever word you want to use ... it clearly was the turning point that killed all momentum the Penguins were building and it gave the Flyers life.

Rust and Travis Konecny were at the center of it after a whistle. Rust came up behind Konecny, and Konecny reacted by throwing an elbow in Rust's face. Rust wrestled Konecny to the ground, and pandemonium ensued:

The Canadian Sportsnet broadcast also produced this additional angle of the start, of Konecny trying to kick Rust's legs out from under him:

Konecny tried to fight Rust at the end of it, shaking off his gloves and taunting Rust, who skated away.

The officials' solution? Put all five players on either side in the box for roughing, regardless of their level of involvement, and give Rust an extra two for ... roughing even harder? Maybe? He's not quite sure.

"I got elbowed," Rust recalled. "So I just kind of locked him up, took him the ground. He tried to kick me, threw a couple punches back and forth. Not sure why I got the extra two."

Rust said he asked the officials why he was the one who got the extra penalty in the altercation, but "they didn't even pay attention to me."

Meanwhile, Karlsson was trying to figure out why he was in the box at all.

"I mean, I didn't do anything," Karlsson said. "They just decided to take everybody who was on the ice, which I've never seen in my 17 years here. It's unfortunate it benefited them more than it benefited us. I don't think that's a question for me, because I don't fully understand what just happened."

The extra penalty on Rust gave the Flyers a power play, which Trevor Zegras capitalized on with a rocket of a one-timer from the left circle. He made a point, naturally, to celebrate in front of the standing-room-only Penguins penalty box that gave him the opportunity for that goal.

It was a different game from that point forward. The crowd wasn't quite out of it after Malkin's early goal, but Malkin's early goal was huge in sucking even just a little energy out of an insane, raucous building. Zegras' goal invigorated the place and sparked the rest of the team.

"Zegras caught a bouncy puck and was able to find a hole past me," Stuart Skinner said. "And then momentum shifts. That's playoffs. To be able to really shift momentum at the right times is huge."

Rasmus Ristolainen put the Flyers ahead just shy of four minutes later, and Nick Seeler added to the lead later in the second with a long-range shot past Skinner, who said he was screened on the play. 

Karlsson's third-period power-play goal gave the Penguins brief hope, only to be dashed when Anthony Mantha's puck-over-glass penalty set the stage for Noah Cates to capitalize on the power play. Owen Tippett's empty-netter sealed it.

Dan Muse afterward was asked to pinpoint where exactly it all went wrong.

"When they put all the players in the box," he deadpanned.

"There's a scrum there," he eventually added. "We get the extra penalty, where that changed everything, and it took a long time to get it all sorted out. I'm not going to be here making excuses. There's plenty that we can do better, but that definitely factored into the feel that period in the game."

The key word there is "feel." Yeah, the Penguins had a penalty to kill that they didn't believe they earned. But the feeling in the entire building was different. The feel from the Flyers' push was different. And in such a tight game, that's enough to be the difference.

The danger of getting sucked into the Flyers' physicality or extracurriculars was a topic of conversation before this series started. They were anticipating it. After Game 1, it became a real danger. 

So, this isn't new. If Konecny wants to throw an elbow in Rust's face, he's going to do that. The Penguins can't control the officiating, but they can control how they respond. And how is it that in Game 3, the response is still such that it sets the stage for a moment like this?

I asked Muse how they can avoid being drawn into situations like that.

"It's a good question," he said after a pause. "I mean, I'll look back. We'll look back on all of them. But they also have to be in a position to defend themselves. It's after almost every whistle or shot. So we've got to focus on all what we can control. We want to play between whistles. I think our guys were working to do that, but it's after every time."

And as a result, the Penguins find themselves on the brink of elimination, needing to win four straight if they are to advance out of this series. If they're going to take this to seven games, they're sure to deal with more situations like this one, where the way they respond is going to affect the momentum. 

The Penguins have two full days between this loss and their next game day. And as Rust put it, that give the Penguins to do some needed "soul-searching."

"We don't get these opportunities very often to get in the playoffs and do something special," he said. "So, we've got to recognize that."