Pregame

Pittsburgh gets Ryan Graves into the lineup and gives Jack St. Ivany a night off. Stuart Skinner gets the start in goal.

First period

It’s not the smoothest start for the Penguins, though you wouldn’t know if from the scoreboard. Skinner has to stop Eeli Tolvanen on a clean breakaway early. Pittsburgh gets the game’s first power play but don’t do much with it. Soon after it expires they score anyways. Blake Lizotte sends a pass back to Parker Wotherspoon and it glides on into the net in no small part to the large frame of Anthony Mantha taking goalie Joey Daccord’s vision away. 1-0 Pens out of nowhere. Who needs a power play when you have Lizotte and Wotherspoon?

The Kraken are awarded a power play, yet it’s the Pens who score. Connor Dewar knocks the puck away from an opponent and has a step right by them for a breakaway. Dewar makes it count by blowing a shot by the glove of Daccord. 2-0.

Seattle is the next on the board, Skinner and Brett Kulak can’t smoothly handover a transition play, the next thing they new Ben Meyers had the puck going to the net and lifted a beauty of a shot to the top corner.

That’s the end of the first. The Pens are up, though they didn’t have a great start. Pittsburgh only managed three shots at 5v5, seven total in the period. They made the most of some chances as they popped up but there was a lot of downtime in between. The Kraken didn’t do much better posting five 5v5 shots of their own and six total in the first 20 minutes.

Second period

Lizotte gets sent off for a minor penalty, the Pens kill it off.

The period becomes heavy on the wall battles, Seattle wins one of those battles when Justin Brazeau can’t clear the defensive zone on his backhand along the boards. A couple of passes later it’s a tie game when Ryan Winterton makes a short pass for Ryan Lindgren to chip in. 2-2 game.

Pittsburgh finds an answer, Sidney Crosby wins an offensive zone faceoff back to Brett Kulak. Kulak pulls the puck towards the middle of the ice as he drifts backwards and tosses a long-range shot on goal. There’s enough traffic again to foil Daccord. 3-2, Pens back in front with five minutes to go.

Ben Kindel gets needlessly driven into the ice late in the period by Lindgren, Pittsburgh gets their second power play of the game, but again are held off the board by Seattle’s 32nd ranked penalty kill.

Both teams scored in the second period, the Pens were able to handle the shot count by a tidy 15-8 margin in the middle frame. That’s more of what was expected coming into this game for Pittsburgh to take advantage in that department.

Third period

The Pens start out strong, Evgeni Malkin and Egor Chinakhov nearly team up for a goal but are denied on a nice save by Daccord. Daccord’s got nothin’ for Brazeau top-shelf shot off a drop pass from Anthony Mantha that hinders the goalie’s vision yet again. 4-2 Pittsburgh, still 17:39 to go.

The pressure continues, Kulak hammers a shot on net with a ton of traffic in front, Daccord fights it off but leaves a rebound that Noel Acciari knocks off the post.

Kulak takes his second minor penalty of the game, Seattle makes them pay. Holy cow does Tolvanen hammer a slapshot. Lotta power on that one. 4-3 game, the Kraken still have 12:13 to work with.

Brandon Montour gets a penalty called on him and the Pens have a chance for a potential dagger but they can’t score on the power play. Instead the dagger comes a little later from Rickard Rakell. Crosby wins the puck back off the wall and quickly passes it back to Rakell who jams one in front the front of the net. 5-3 game.

Seattle pulls the goalie but there’s no late-game dramatics to be found today. Dewar shoots from way back to extend the score to a 6-3 final.

Some thoughts

• The early start wasn’t the best, perhaps for understandable reasons considering the long plane flight yesterday combined with an odd 2pm local start. Body clocks must have been going haywire, tough to get the legs freed up- which shown through in the Pens’ game in the early going. They got better and grew stronger in their play as the game went along.
• Have to give Seattle some credit though, they clogged things up as much as possible and made Pittsburgh play a hard game along the boards. We all know Crosby doesn’t mind getting in the trenches and muckin’ it up but that makes for a long night at the office when the puck is along the wall so often and a player has to fight for and earn every inch out there.
• To that end of making the game tough, the Pens had their share of moments too. Daccord’s eyes were taken away with bodies in front of him, that strategy brought success for the visitors to score on a couple of innocent enough long-distance shots, had the goalie been able to see them.
• Dewar’s shorthanded goal was only Pittsburgh’s second of the whole season, now 48 games into the season. That’s a bit of a surprise with how generally good the PK has been and even how productive many of the typical PKers have been at even strength.
• It was also only the second game of the season for the Pens that two defenseman scored in the same game (the other being 10/25 vs CBJ).
• You can tell how dissatisfied the coaches were with St. Ivany by opting to dress four left-handed defensemen instead, a rarity for them to select these days. The move also got Graves into his first NHL game in over a month. Shame there for St. Ivany, how long will he stay in the doghouse?
• While one right-handed defenseman in St. Ivany is stock down in recent days and games, Connor Clifton would have to be the opposite for stock up. These last five games were the first time this season Clifton has gotten picked to play five in a row, he’s been making the most of the opportunity with his physical play (as to be expected), the more surprising inputs have been his skating and puck moving being noticeable these days. And if you haven’t seen the #content Clifton produced from the team’s jet, spend the next 3:17 of your day on it. A star is born?
• The Pittsburgh PK gave up their first goal in 21 tries against them in the third, took one heck of a blast from Tolvanen to break the streak. Considering the Pens’ PK scored a goal for themselves they found an unconventional way to keep it even.
• The power play was hardly as good, though. Aside from picking on a weak Flyer PK last week that group hasn’t been performing that well lately, perhaps the one area where Erik Karlsson’s injury absence has been felt the most.
• Casual two point night for Crosby in his 1,400th career NHL game. Such a satisfying career to watch unfold, especially since becoming the 45th player in league history to hit this many games looked more a longshot at times. Instead, only Wayne Gretzky had more points through 1,400 games. Maybe Connor McDavid has something to say about that one day, for now that speaks to how great Crosby has been.

The Pens will now head north of the border for a bit, next game is in Calgary on Wednesday to try and repay the Flames for winning in Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago.