Penguins/Islanders Recap: For once, Pens hold on against NYI

The Penguins go up 3-0 and of course nearly squander it but find a way to get a 3-2 win over the finish line

Pregame

Kris Letang is absent tonight after suffering a lower body injury in last night’s game, which opens the door for 26-year old Nathan Clurman to make his NHL debut. Alex Nedeljkovic is in the net for his first game since December 17th.

First period

The Penguins strike early on the type of rush goal that the opportunistic Islanders tend to score against Pittsburgh. A NYI forward slips and opens up a great passing lane up the ice. Then rookie defender Isiah George takes on false stride up instead of immediately pivoting backwards and Michael Bunting exploits that space and gets an impromptu 2-on-1. Scott Mayfield makes the next mini-mistake in the chain by leaving his feet and failing to stop Bunting’s centering pass for Anthony Beauvillier. The result is that the average, nothing looking breakout turns into a quality chance in front, which Beauvillier buries. 1-0 Pens.

In games like these that always turn in the margins on small breaks, New York fails to score on their best chance in the first when Nedeljkovic makes a clutch stop on Mat Barzal from right in front.

A big difference on which team wins and loses comes down to which ones score and which ones don’t in the plays above. Tonight it was the Pens on the positive side of both instances.

Second period

Sidney Crosby provides his latest history making moment in the second with a picture perfect pass that serves as his 1,034th career NHL assist. That number being especially significant to this franchise considering Mario Lemieux ended his career with 1,033.

Nice finish by Michael Bunting on that goal to make the nice Crosby pass stand up as what will be one of the more memorable ones in his career.

For as nervy as multi-goal leads for the Pens tend to go (and doubly so with leads against the Islanders), it wasn’t too dramatic, at least in the second period. Much of that is credit to Nedeljkovic who wasn’t tasked with a lot but made some stylish saves like flashing the glove on the penalty kill here.

Third period

The sense of “yeah this looks like it’s going to be our night” continues for the Pens when Phil Tomasino shoots a puck that was going about 10 feet wide of the net before it slammed into an Islander player and jumped into the net. When you’re hot, you’re hot as Jerry Reed taught us.

Patrick Roy goes all out and pulls his goalie with over seven minutes to play. Might as well try and get some kind of spark. It works, the added player leads to Alex Romanov hammers a deep shot that finds its mark. That makes it a 3-1 game with 7:01 to go.

NYI weathers the game a little more and picks their spot to pull the goalie again, this time when they gain possession with about 4:30 left to go. It pays off again, courtesy a bounce off Ryan Graves in front of the net to narrow the lead to 3-2 with 3:50 to play.

The sweat is officially on full tilt in the closing moments. NYI goalie Marcus Hogberg makes a tremendous save on Bryan Rust on the 40th Pittsburgh shot of the night and soon after is back to the bench for an extra attacker for a third time.

This time the Pens get a clear and it takes some time off the clock. Pittsburgh gets a whistle and utilizes their timeout with 21 seconds to go. Crosby is out there the whole time, he loses a faceoff but ices the puck with six seconds to go and the Pens hang on for that to get out with a win.

Some thoughts

• Nice response game for the Pens, they played flat and weren’t happy with their game against the Islanders last night. They probably won’t love the last seven minutes of tonight, but it’s easier and preferable to survive a 3-0 lead than be chasing a 4-1 deficit.
• From tonight and last week against the Flyers it looked like some good energy and vibes out of the crowd. Hasn’t always been the case this season, which to be fair there wasn’t that much to cheer about early on in the season. But the holiday crowds have been great, too bad that is over (no more home games until Jan 7).
• The absence of Letang is the latest blow for the Pens on defense. They’re pushing some, if not most (if not all) of the remaining players past their edges of their comfort zone. P.O Joseph played over 24 minutes tonight! Graves had to play 21 minutes! Unbelievable stuff to consider from just a few days or weeks ago (aside from the fact, you know, Joseph wasn’t even on the team a few weeks ago). Situation remains extremely dire on the blueline, it looks like Pettersson will be back sooner than later and they’ll need him at 100% ASAP.
• Drew O’Connor hasn’t scored since October 18th (31 games). He has to find sick humor in Tomasino scoring on objectively one of the worst/luckiest shot attempts of the season. O’Connor did have seven shot attempts and actually looked fairly impactful and noticeable in this game compared to the recent past, which let’s hope is a step in the right direction.
• Speaking of improved lately, Beauvillier’s back on the upswing. Six shots on goal and finally a revenge goal against a former team swings in the Pens’ favor.
• Bunting too has been red hot, when he’s in the zone and hot, he’s about as good as anyone around in small spurts. Those spurts have been happening more frequently lately with four goals in the last three games.
• Gotta give Roy some credit for his decisions on the timing on pulling his goalie in the third. It played out masterfully for him. He moved early to be aggressive and see if it would work, when 99% of current NHL coaches wouldn’t have done so early. And it worked. Then he waited and picked the perfect spot to repeat the process and it also ended with another goal. Cool stuff to put his input on the game, but the hole they were in proved to be a little too deep to climb out of in this game, courtesy of that crazy bounce on Tomasino’s goal.
• Considering the Pens were riding Grzelcyk/Karlsson and Graves/Joseph down the stretch as their d-pairs trying to defend in front of the net, I found myself almost unironically wondering if they’d be better off running Noel Acciari or Cody Glass out their and playing with four forwards. Silly idea for a number of reasons, of course, but we’re almost at the point for the available defensemen that you can catch yourself wondering things like that.
• Always thought the measure of a good backup is how they fare when it’s been 10-14 days since the last start, the team needs a big game on the back-to-back. Nice marks for Nedeljkovic today. Without looking at all his starts, I’d guess this was one of his better ones this season, having more to do with the lack of quality starts under his belt this year. But today was one.

As a result, the Pens put together a winning effort and now sit in a (games played aided) playoff spot as of today. Better to be there than not be there. The Pens are back at it on Tuesday in Detroit, and if at this time of year you don’t know what day of the week it even is during this holiday season- that’s two sleeps or about 48 hours from when the current game ended.