Penguins Battle Back for Hard-Fought Point vs. Devils

In the third period of Pittsburgh’s matchup with New Jersey, Sidney Crosby skated off and headed down the runway after a collision near the offensive blue line.

It wasn’t a big hit or anything like that, but the captain got caught in an awkward spot. “I got tangled up,” said Crosby, who later returned to the game.

While Crosby was in the locker room, Kevin Hayes evened the score at 2-2 against a difficult opponent, a fast and dynamic team with game-breaking talent who’s shored up defensively under Sheldon Keefe, in his first season as head coach. The Devils had built a 2-0 lead with a pair of goals from star forward Jack Hughes.

Ultimately, Pittsburgh lost in a shootout, 3-2 – but it was a hard-fought point.

“That’s not an easy loss when you lose a guy like that for a period of time,” Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan said of Crosby, who had a four-game goal streak – the longest active coming into tonight – end in the contest.

“Obviously, he means so much to this team in so many ways. He's the heartbeat of the group. I thought the guys competed hard, and obviously Hayesy gets a real nice 4-on-4 goal. I thought it gave the bench a boost, and then we get Sid back. But it's never an easy thing when he leaves the bench, that's for sure.”

Rickard Rakell also scored for the Penguins after being added to Sweden’s 4 Nations Face-Off roster (full feature coming Wednesday). He made it 2-1 after having a goal disallowed for a kicking motion late in the first period that would have gotten Pittsburgh on the board first. Instead, Hughes got his first of the night with 16.4 seconds left in the frame.

"I just tried to kick it to my stick. Yeah, took a funny bounce into the net,” Rakell said. “Didn't have any time to control it, so, I thought it could have gone either way. I mean, you never know in those situations."

After a tight first period, the second period was filled with special teams, with the Penguins forced to kill off an early double minor assessed to P.O Joseph for high sticking. Crosby felt like Pittsburgh pushed hard in the third before it went to extra time.

Alex Nedeljkovic, who’s been heating up as of late, continued his strong play all night. While he was his usual candid self when assessing his performance in the shootout, saying he needed to do a better job of getting the job done there. But his teammates agreed to disagree.

“He gave us a chance. He made some big saves all night, especially in the shootout,” Crosby said. “But when you get down to that, anything can really happen. But we had some good looks in overtime, and he made some saves in overtime. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get done there.”

This was Pittsburgh's final home game before the 4 Nations Break. They have two more road games in New York City and Philadelphia, which will be the annual Highmark Dads Trip.

THEY SAID IT

“I think the guys are competing. We’re trying to stay in the fight here to for playoff spot. We know what we're up against. I think the guys have embraced the challenge. I think they're competing extremely hard. The new guys that have come in, I think they fit in really well. So, we've won a couple of games here. We lose this one in a shootout. We got two left before the break. We got an opportunity to try to put ourselves in the best possible position. So, we're just going to have to keep fighting.” – Mike Sullivan