Pittsburgh Penguins Face Off Against Tampa Bay Lightning on 1/12/2025

Who: Tampa Bay Lightning (22-15-3, 47 points, 4th place Atlantic Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (18-18-8, 44 points, 5th place Metropolitan Division)

When: 5:00 p.m. ET

How to Watch: Broadcasting on Sportsnet Pittsburgh, FDSN Sun in the local markets, steaming on ESPN+

Pens’ Path Ahead: After today, the Pens have one more at home Tuesday night against Seattle. They better take a good look around and enjoy it, because a seven-game road trip starts after that (first stops come on Friday/Saturday in Buffalo and Washington DC).

Opponent Track: Today is the second of a three-game road swing for the Lightning, they were up in New Jersey last night (starting their game at 7:00pm, after the Pens’ game yesterday ended!), where they ended up losing 3-2 in OT to the Devils. TB heads out after today to Boston to finish their current trip.

Season Series: The Pens face the Lightning one more time on March 25th, they already played back on Nov. 19th, a 3-2 Tampa OT victory in Pittsburgh courtesy of a Brayden Point winner.

Hidden Stat: The Penguins are 6-1-1 in the team’s last eight games against the Lightning.

Getting to know the Lightning

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Jake Guentzel - Brayden Point - Nikita Kucherov

Brandon Hagel - Anthony Cirelli - Conor Geekie

Gage Goncalves - Nick Paul - Michael Eyssimont

Zemgus Girgensons - Luke Glendening - Mitchell Chaffee

DEFENSEMEN

Victor Hedman / Darren Raddysh

Ryan McDonagh / Erik Cernak

Emil Lilleberg / Nick Perbix

Goalies: Jonas Johansson (Andrei Vasilevskiy started last night)

Scratches: Cam Atkinson

IR: J.J. Moser

—Looking like a very fortunate breaking the scheduling for the Pens since they might be in-line to see Johansson instead of Vasilevskiy due to Tampa playing in New Jersey last night and the Bolts using their No. 1 goalie against the tougher team.

—The Lightning like Moser, but three weeks ago he took an 8-10 week injury to the lower body. Can be difficult to hit the ground running in crunch time. Per Puck Pedia, Tampa is currently projected to have $4.6 million of cap space saved up by the trade deadline. The Lightning have always been bold, could they be Marcus Pettersson suitors? They haven’t had problems going lefty-lefty on their top pair with Hedman in the past.

—The current top-six forwards (and even top-four defensemen) look great. The depth players...Well, maybe not so much. That’s the salary cap at work to dismantle a championship team, with players like Alex Killorn, Ondrej Palat and Ross Colton distant memories (not to mention ones like Yanni Gourde, Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow that are even further removed). Financial restraints wait for no champ.

Player stats

**note: does not include last night’s game**

—Nikita Kucherov has broken the aging curve for normal NHL careers. Last season he put up a career-high and absurd 44G+100A season that landed him the Art Ross trophy. This year has been a small step back — he entered yesterday’s games in fifth place in the scoring race and 10 points back of Nathan MacKinnon (Kucherov has fewer games played) — but Kucherov remains one of the most dangerous offensive players in the game.

And now for the Pens

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Rickard Rakell - Sidney Crosby - Bryan Rust

Michael Bunting - Cody Glass - Anthony Beauvillier

Drew O’Connor - Kevin Hayes - Jesse Puljujarvi

Matt Nieto - Blake Lizotte - Noel Acciari

DEFENSEMEN

Marcus Pettersson / Kris Letang

Matt Grzelcyk / Erik Karlsson

Owen Pickering / P.O. Joseph

Goalies: Tristan Jarry and Alex Nedeljkovic

Potential Scratches: Ryan Shea, Ryan Graves, Evgeni Malkin (day-to-day undisclosed upper body injury)

IR: Philip Tomasino

—Jarry did have to take mop up duty in yesterday’s 5-0 loss to Ottawa, but he only faced five starts and would have to be the choice for today’s game.