Pittsburgh blows lead but recovers for shootout win

Pregame

The Penguins make a few changes after last night’s embarrassing loss. Ryan Graves gets a night off which opens room for Owen Pickering to make his NHL debut. Vasily Ponomarev is in for his first game as a member of the Pens. Alex Nedeljkovic back in the net.

First period

Pittsburgh strikes first and just 1:01 into the game. Cody Ceci makes a Ryan Graves-esque play to pressure and leave the front of the net open and Bryan Rust reacts by shoving in a backhander. 1-0 Pens early.

It appears the Pens make it 2-0 with a classic Evgeni Malkin backhand on the rush. Unfortunately it was easy to see that Michael Bunting was senselessly offside on the entry and San Jose challenged. They win to wipe out a pretty Malkin goal.

Pittsburgh still gets the next goal anyways. Pickering makes a pass from the point down to Drew O’Connor. O’Connor puts a pass off the goalie’s pads and the rebound goes to Jesse Puljujarvi. The big Finn knocks it back in for his second goal of the season.

Marcus Pettersson takes the game’s first penalty. Rookies Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith make some nice passes but nothing too threatening.

Pittsburgh up by a pair at the first break.

Second period

Mackenzie Blackwood has replaced Vitek Vanecek in the Sharks’ net. The Pens make it 3-0, Crosby finds space deep in the zone and fires. The shot is stopped but the puck gets back to the Pens’ captain. He gives it a second try and the slapshot fires into the net.

Ponomarev takes a penalty for delay of game and the Sharks get their first goal quickly. Ryan Shea is backing up and has a chance to touch the puck but doesn’t do a lot with it and one pass later Tyler Toffoli has it with Nedeljkovic pulled off the angle. 3-1.

The Pens get their first power play of the game, it looks pretty decent but doesn’t score and ends a tad early when Malkin is whistled for a hooking call.

Pittsburgh up two at the last break.

Third period

The dreaded two-goal lead for the Pens dries up. Mikael Granlund scores the first one on the rush, chipping a puck over Nedeljkovic’s shoulder.

San Jose ties it up with 8:20 to play. Jack St. Ivany gets in some trouble and loses his feet his partner Matt Grzelcyk just keeps backing out of the play, cool, cool. Toffoli takes advantage for his second goal of the game to tie things at 3.

Blackwood starts playing crazy good, stopping Puljujarvi on a big shot and then making a side-to-side push to deny Rickard Rakell.

The Pens’ up the difficulty level when Anthony Beauvillier takes a penalty. Pittsburgh kills it off.

No one scores again.

Overtime

Some fun OT action, Crosby comes close a few times to netting his 600th goal in dramatic fashion but Blackwood is there to match him.

Shootout

Rakell goes first, Blackwood doesn’t bite on the dekes and makes the save.

Crosby goes for the Pens, he shoots forehand high blocker that goes off the post and in. 1-1.

First overall pick Macklin Celebrini is up next, Nedeljkovic makes the save.

Rust is up for Pittsburgh, his five-hole attempt doesn’t work.

Rookie Will Smith has the chance for the “walk off” win, but Nedeljkovic stones him.

Round 4 sees Beauvillier take his turn, he dekes to the backhand and scores! 2-1 Pens.

William Eklund has to score or the game is over...And there will be more shots when his five hole shot hits the back of the net.

Malkin starts Round 5, he makes no mistakes to snap it by Blackwood. 3-2 Pens

Alex Wennberg now has to score to keep the game alive. And he can’t. Nedeljkovic stops him and Pittsburgh gets the win.

Some thoughts

• Ryan Graves: 0 assists in 19 games this year so far. Owen Pickering: an assist 6:34 into the first period of his NHL career. Pickering isn’t in the NHL to rack up points but he didn’t look worse than Graves from the third pair in any aspect on the ice. Pickering made some decent reads with the puck on his stick, wasn’t exposed for anything flagrantly poor in his own end. Nice debut. Hopefully enough for more in the future, there are always going to be some bumps on the rocky road of progression for a rookie defenseman along the way but it was great to see a former first round pick make it to the NHL in the early part of his draft+3 season.
• Poulin, O’Connor and Puljujarvi have been providing some juice as a line for a couple games now. Nice to see some fresh blood being effective and generating a goal tonight.
• Crosby up to 599 goals now, hopefully he can power through to the milestone and then break free. Always seems to bog down a little when he approaches items like this, but he’s been shooting a ton lately.
• You can see why the coaching is so hard on Bunting when he makes lapses like putting himself offside for no real purpose to take that Malkin goal off the board. Details matter and his haven’t been very sharp this season.
• Who led the Pens in hits tonight? Rakell, with four. Including one where he flew threw the middle of the ice and popped countryman Fabian Zetterlund for some unknown reason. Stood out since Rakell isn’t exactly a power forward but he certainly went out of his way to drop a shoulder into the guy in that instance.
• The Sharks still have a long way to go on their road to respectability and building back, 2024-25 will be their sixth straight year of not qualifying for the playoffs. That process can be very slow and very painful and they’re living through it trying to get to the other side these days.
• Wasn’t pretty for the Pens, but they win their first game in eight days. It took a shootout, and they blew a two-goal third period lead but a win is a win. Good thing, the upcoming schedule (TB, WIN, UTAH, VAN) is daunting.

Only one game in the next five days, the Pens get to settle down a bit and get ready for Tampa on Tuesday night.