Summary Exhausted penguins are no match for Rangers

Summary: Exhausted penguins are no match for Rangers

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Early Thursday, the Penguins called Filip Hallander on an 911 call from the AHL, meaning they were missing 12 healthy forwards. With a non-COVID disease sweeping through the dressing room, it was just a matter of seeing which two forwards couldn’t play. One ended up being Radim Zohorna, a recently healthy scratch, but in one fell swoop the other sick player up front was Sidney Crosby. Add John Marino to miss his first game of the season due to illness and the Pens played from behind before the game had even started.

For 20 minutes, however, Pittsburgh held up impressively with the New York Rangers. They had arguably the best scoring chance of the period when Danton Heinen deflected a pass down the middle for Teddy Blueger to get a great view of the net. He missed the net with his shot and the game continued.

The Penguins have been bitten lately with goals in critical situations that coaches always stress. First minute of period. Last minute of period. Shift after a goal. These are crucial times and in the first minute of the second period Frank Vatrano scored to open the scoring for New York. Blog friend Jesse Marshall did a great breakdown of where and how the pens’ forecheck failed them for just a second and how they ended up getting bitten.

Midway through the second period, Rangers extended their lead to 2-0 from an almost identical start to a rush sequence. Artemi Panarin hit with his backhand and maybe Tristan Jarry would want that one back.

Those would be the highlights of the game as well, with teams trading a few power plays and then conceding Dryden Hunt in the empty net to set the final score as a 3-0 Rangers win.

Some thoughts

  • A lot of juice for this game dried up with the announcement that the pens would be down. Crosby, Marino and Jason Zucker would not return from his injury today either. It’s not much of a playoff preview with so many missing pieces, and not too much to take away from it.
  • With Marino missing a game tonight, Evan Rodrigues becomes the team’s only contender as an Ironman, having appeared in all 72 games so far this season.
  • Filip Hallander made his NHL debut (barely, after just 5:14 ice time). But it will also finally provide the answer to the trivia question “who was the first penguin player born in the 2000s”?
  • For all the fan love the Guentzel-Malkin-Rust combo gets, there wasn’t much of an instant spark in this one. Igor Shesterkin stole Guentzel in the second half right after a nice pass from Malkin and Rangers stopped a Guentzel pass attempt on Malkin in the third but otherwise a pretty quiet night for the best remaining players.
  • Speaking of Shesterkin, he’ll wrap up the regular season against the Pens conceding just four goals in four games, just one of which came in a 5v5. That doesn’t leave a very positive feeling going into the playoffs when you see a keeper with a 0.960% save in the season series, but at this rate, with Carolina losing to Buffalo as of press time, who knows, NYR could do the improbable do and make a run at the top of the division if current trends continue.
  • Anthony Angello made some waves, dropping Tyler Motte with a big hit late in the game. Motte, initially 5’10, had stretched out to play the puck. Angello, 6’5, could have given him a break but didn’t, smashing a player in a vulnerable position. There was no head contact, but it was a heavy hit. The referees obviously felt something needed to be called out and opted for a minor disruption, leaving neither coach happy. Mike Sullivan would have had a better point, it was definitely not interference since the puck was in play. If anything, it was for roughing to hit a smaller player too hard,
  • The national broadcast was a bit critical of Angello in his decision to go for the big hit when he could have quit, but we have a player in the fourth row who’s getting a few minutes a game and is (literally) trying to make it create an impact. Angello was credited with four goals for the game despite playing under seven minutes. He’s trying to throw the body around and do his job, which is to finish his checks and play hard. Hopefully Motte is okay, but this isn’t exactly a player who needs to be tackled or anything, more of an unfortunate result of a collision.
  • The pens got three power plays and none were effective or looked very pretty. Understandable since there was no Crosby out there.
  • The hard news – this is actually the start of three games in four days and four games in six. The schedule will just ramp up from here and hopefully the worst of the sick leave is over. Just when you thought that was left for 2020 or 2021…

And it’s going to be a big weekend indeed when the Caps and Preds come to Pittsburgh for some afternoon hockey games.