Letang fuels Penguins' belief in miracle comeback with 'crazy' Game 5 goal

PITTSBURGH -- Strange forces seemed to be at play Monday that are giving the Pittsburgh Penguins even more reason to believe they can pull off a miracle comeback against the Philadelphia Flyers.

How else do you explain Kris Letang’s wacky-bounce goal that proved to be the game-winner in the Penguins’ 3-2 victory against the Flyers in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference First Round at PPG Paints Arena?

“I’m a big believer you earn your bounces,” Penguins coach Dan Muse said. “Bounces are part of the game, but I think you earn them, and if you're working and you're working to do the right things, that’s usually when the bounces go your way.”

After losing the first three games of the best-of-7 series, the Penguins have done a lot more right, and gotten their share of bounces in the process, in winning the past two games to force Game 6 in Philadelphia on Wednesday (7:30 p.m. ET; TNT, HBO Max, truTV, SN360, TVAS2, SN-PIT, NBCSP).

So, though they still trail 3-2 in the series, the challenge in front of them no longer appears as daunting.

“I think we're getting into our game a lot more,” Letang said. “Our pace is a lot higher. The way we hold onto the puck offensively, we're not one-and-done on the rush. We're sustaining zone time. It's hard to defend. So, we have to keep doing that.”

Letang’s goal, which snapped a 2-2 tie at 17:12 of the second period, came at the end of one of those sustained shifts in the Flyers end. So, in that way, as Muse said, the Penguins earned the good fortune that resulted in the puck ending up in the net behind Flyers goalie Dan Vladar 35 seconds after they entered the offensive zone.

The Penguins worked the puck around the zone and down low, tiring the Flyers out, before Sidney Crosby passed it from behind the net to Letang at the right point. Letang unleashed a wrist shot that missed the net, but the puck caromed off the end boards and ricocheted in front, hitting the back of Vladar’s left leg before sliding over the goal line.

“Especially after all the looks I got in the second, I can't believe that one goes in,” Letang said. “But I just tried to put it there. Obviously, it made a crazy bounce.”

Crosby headed to the Penguins bench after passing the puck to Letang, so his back was to the play when the puck bounced in.

“I still haven't seen the complete shot,” Crosby said. “I just saw it laying, I want to say, around the goal line or just over it, so I didn't really know how it got there. I was changing. So, happy to see it go in.”

It was a helpless feeling for Vladar, though.

“It's an unfortunate bounce, to be honest with you,” he said. “You can always do something better on every single goal. It doesn't matter if it's a bounce off the boards or if it's a 2-on-0 breakaway, we can always do something a little bit better.

“But, yeah, they just got that bounce. We didn't.”

Regardless of how the puck went in, there was no disputing the importance of Letang’s goal. After falling behind 2-0 on Connor Dewar’s goal 3:17 into the second period, Philadelphia battled back to tie it at 2-2 with Alex Bump scoring at 3:29 and Travis Sanheim at 15:06.

Crosby had been in the locker room briefly after being hit in the leg with a shot by teammate Ryan Shea and returned to the bench in time to see Sanheim’s shot from outside the left circle deflect off the stick of Penguins defenseman Erik Karlsson and slip into the net past goalie Arturs Silovs on the short side. Philadelphia appeared ready to take control of the game until Letang’s shot bounced in 2:06 after Sanheim’s tying goal.

“Obviously, it's a big goal after they tied it up there,” Crosby said. “So, to get that one late in the period was huge. That's a big momentum swing there to get that.”

Silovs saw it as maybe the bad break that went against him on Sanheim’s goal evening out.

“They got a bounce. We got a bounce,” he said. “So, it’s just part of hockey. Just keep playing, and it was nice to give us a lead.”

The Penguins locked things down defensively in front of Silovs to make that lead stand up, limiting the Flyers to six shots on goal in the third period. That gave Letang his second game-deciding goal in as many games.

The one he scored in Pittsburgh’s 4-2 victory in Game 4 on Saturday came on a slap shot from the high slot that went directly into the net, but the odd one he scored Monday felt just as good.

“Well, in the playoffs, even an empty-net goal matters,” Letang said. “So, yeah, it's a pretty good feeling. You want to help your team as best as you can, and whether they go in with a perfect play or a bank off the wall doesn't matter. They all count the same.”

The Penguins moved a step closer to becoming just the fifth team in NHL history to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-7 series. Now, they get to play another game in Philadelphia on Wednesday with a chance to bring the series back to Pittsburgh for Game 7 on Saturday.

“We know it's a big challenge going into there, but I think we have a lot of belief in our group,” Crosby said, “We've done it time and time again, so we've got to go do it again here.”