There've been prettier plays by the Penguins this season than Michael Bunting's second-period goal tonight, for sure, several of them on this evening alone among all seven goals.
Heck, Bunting was part of one himself a half-hour earlier:
But there are pretty goals in hockey, there are big goals, and there's generally a gazillion miles between the two. And what Bunting blasted behind the Flyers' Samuel Ersson with 1:12 left in the second period might well have been his team's biggest of the year:
“Karl did a great quick-up," Bunting recalled of Erik Karlsson's stretch pass to Evgeni Malkin at the Philadelphia blue line. "That wouldn’t have happened unless Karl made that quick play. And then, Geno's obviously an elite player. You’ve got to know that, if he has the puck on his stick, he can make a play like that any time. You've got to be ready for it and read off it."
A blind, lateral backhand whip-across? For that?
"I’ve been playing with players like that my whole career," Bunting continued, referring to his time in Toronto alongside the likes of Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. "Just kind of complement them and kind of know where to go and get into those soft areas. He made a great play to me, and I was able to put it in.”
I'm betting he was able to principally because, as, oh, say, maybe 18,290 paying patrons had picked up along the way, Ersson wasn't stopping much. So the best path to a goal in such a scenario would be ... yeah: Compact wind-up. Short-side aim. Boom.
"That kid," Mike Sullivan would say of Bunting, "has a knack for scoring goals."
Nine of them on the season. And again, none bigger.
Because, as several players readily acknowledged afterward, they needed this result almost as much as they wanted it. These teams were tied in the standings, these teams are likely to linger at the Eastern Conference playoff periphery into the spring, and no one on either side wanted to take some foul taste into the NHL's four-day Christmas break.
To boot, the Penguins' 4-1 lead through one period was cut to 4-3 in the second and, combined with Tristan Jarry giving up a stinker for the third Philadelphia goal, the place had become more tightly wound than a Neil Peart snare until Bunting came through.
The fans weren't the only ones to feel this, apparently.
"Oh, huge goal for us. Just huge," Rickard Rakell would tell me. "We didn't want to come in here up by just one. It was a big sigh of relief for us. Allowed us to regroup in here."
Remember this one.
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THE ASYLUM
Dejan Kovacevic
8:11 am - 12.24.2024UptownDrive to the Net: Bunting's boom
There've been prettier plays by the Penguins this season than Michael Bunting's second-period goal tonight, for sure, several of them on this evening alone among all seven goals.
Heck, Bunting was part of one himself a half-hour earlier:
That was tic-tac-toe with a tic to spare, huh?
But there are pretty goals in hockey, there are big goals, and there's generally a gazillion miles between the two. And what Bunting blasted behind the Flyers' Samuel Ersson with 1:12 left in the second period might well have been his team's biggest of the year:
Not that this was ugly, of course.
“Karl did a great quick-up," Bunting recalled of Erik Karlsson's stretch pass to Evgeni Malkin at the Philadelphia blue line. "That wouldn’t have happened unless Karl made that quick play. And then, Geno's obviously an elite player. You’ve got to know that, if he has the puck on his stick, he can make a play like that any time. You've got to be ready for it and read off it."
A blind, lateral backhand whip-across? For that?
"I’ve been playing with players like that my whole career," Bunting continued, referring to his time in Toronto alongside the likes of Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. "Just kind of complement them and kind of know where to go and get into those soft areas. He made a great play to me, and I was able to put it in.”
I'm betting he was able to principally because, as, oh, say, maybe 18,290 paying patrons had picked up along the way, Ersson wasn't stopping much. So the best path to a goal in such a scenario would be ... yeah: Compact wind-up. Short-side aim. Boom.
"That kid," Mike Sullivan would say of Bunting, "has a knack for scoring goals."
Nine of them on the season. And again, none bigger.
Because, as several players readily acknowledged afterward, they needed this result almost as much as they wanted it. These teams were tied in the standings, these teams are likely to linger at the Eastern Conference playoff periphery into the spring, and no one on either side wanted to take some foul taste into the NHL's four-day Christmas break.
To boot, the Penguins' 4-1 lead through one period was cut to 4-3 in the second and, combined with Tristan Jarry giving up a stinker for the third Philadelphia goal, the place had become more tightly wound than a Neil Peart snare until Bunting came through.
The fans weren't the only ones to feel this, apparently.
"Oh, huge goal for us. Just huge," Rickard Rakell would tell me. "We didn't want to come in here up by just one. It was a big sigh of relief for us. Allowed us to regroup in here."
Remember this one.
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