Musings: Penguins Get Huge Win Against NHL's Top Team

As the great Mike Lange might have said, “if you missed this one, shame on you for six weeks!”

Boosted by the return of Evgeni Malkin, the dynamic offensive wizardry of Erik Karlsson and the steady netminding of Arturs Silovs, the Penguins skated into Denver on Monday night and waltzed away with a 7-2 victory at Ball Arena.

“Any time you can win on the road, or in general, playing a team like that, to come out with two points, it’s definitely (huge),” head coach Dan Muse said. “As you go through the year, all of these (positive) things stack up. You own these experiences. You take it and you move it forward. I think the guys should take some confidence from it. Not just in one area, but a lot of different areas.”

When Muse met with reporters for his daily media availability, he talked about how Monday night’s matchup was “an easy game to get excited for” with how well the Avalanche had been playing while compiling the NHL’s best record.

We can talk all night about how good the Avalanche are, and deservedly so. But the 2025-26 Pittsburgh Penguins are also a really good hockey team. Monday’s victory not only improved the Penguins to 2-1-1 on their season-long five-game road swing, it ran Pittsburgh’s season point total to 83. While there is a ton of hockey to be played over the next four weeks, that number was good enough for seventh-most in the NHL at the end of Monday’s action.

Digging deeper into how the Penguins have put themselves in this position thus far, their 6-2-3 record against the six teams above them have absolutely helped the cause. Sixty-seven games into the season, the Penguins should feel like they’re also one of the best teams, something they proved Monday at Ball Arena.

“It's a good confidence booster for our team,” forward Anthony Mantha said. “Obviously, we know we're able to play with every team. And the way we played tonight, it just shows how resilient our team is and how special we are in here.”

How did the Penguins pull out such a convincing victory on the final scoreboard? By doing exactly what they’ve done all season.

Malkin’s return was going to be a huge storyline no matter how things unfolded. He didn’t disappoint, scoring twice in the Pens’ four-goal opening-frame outburst.

Karlsson has been great all year. During the 11 games he’s played since returning from the Milano Cortina Olympics, the high-flying Swede has taken his game to another gear with 14 points (3G-11A), which ties him with Edmonton’s Evan Bouchard for most among NHL blueliners during that span. Karlsson scored the backbreaking fifth goal and tacked on a pair of assists to notch his fifth multi-point effort in nine March games.

Stats are great, they usually portend to points on the scoreboard. For Karlsson, his artistry was a bigger story. Fifteen seconds after Colorado had tied the game at 1-1, Karlsson picked up a wraparound behind Silovs, turned, and in one motion lasered a pass onto the blade of Mantha to spring his behind Cale Makar. Mantha went backhand to forward for his career-high 26^th goal, putting the Penguins in front for good.

“A great heads up play by him,” Mantha said. “Obviously, the shot went wide, and I just kind of cheated, maybe, a little bit. But sometimes you get rewarded, and backhand five-hole, just like we love it.”

In the second period, with Colorado pressing to get back in the game, Karlsson deftly kept a bouncing puck in at the point, made a shifty move to create space from Nazem Kadri, then sent a twisted wrist shot off the body of Colorado’s Sam Malinski for the backbreaking goal.

Since Silovs pitched an opening-night shutout in New York, the Penguins have received solid goaltending most nights. Sometimes that’s meant goalies standing on their heads, other times it’s meant needing timely saves down the stretch like Stuart Skinner on Saturday in Utah.

Facing the NHL’s highest-scoring team, Silovs was up to the task. The four goals that Pittsburgh scored to chase Scott Wedgewood in favor of Mackenzie Blackwood will steal the headlines, but those markers held up because of how locked in Silovs was.

Colorado held a 17-7 shots advantage in the opening frame. But Silovs was up to the task, making blocker saves, glove saves, pad saves, you-name-it saves, many through heavy traffic. Even in the third period, Silovs glove save on Nazem Kadri’s cross-grain shot 56 seconds in set the tone that the Pens were locking down.

Pittsburgh equaled a season high by scoring seven goals thanks to a formula that has worked wonders all year – the sum of its parts coming together to produce a result great than its individual components.

Bryan Rust is firmly entrenched as a franchise icon by this point. As he closes in on 30 goals once again, he still manages to go under the radar. On this night, his goal and assist ran his point total to 13 (6G-7A) in the 11 games since the break.

Egor Chinakhov has been a spectacular pickup since arriving from Columbus. His tenacious puck pursuit before setting up Malkin’s second goal exemplified everything this Penguins team has been about since Game 1.

Arguably the most consistent line the Pens have had this season is the fourth line of Blake Lizotte, Noel Acciari and Connor Dewar. On Monday morning, Muse had to deliver the news that Lizotte would be out against the Aves. Newcomer Elmer Soderblom took his place. The result? Just multiple point efforts from all three, as Soderblom tallied for the first time in black and gold and Acciari scored for the second-straight contest.

You could go on and on with the superlatives. But we’ll hold those for another night, because as the Pittsburgh Penguins continue proving, there appears to be many more wins coming as the team continues to find ways to thrive during the March gauntlet.

Next up, the Pens will wrap up their season-long five-game road trip on Wednesday in Carolina. Pittsburgh is 1-0-1 against the Canes, including stealing a point late to open this trip when Pittsburgh scored twice in the final two minutes to erase a 4-2 deficit.

Who knows how the trip will wrap up at Lenovo Center on Wednesday, but one thing we do know, the Penguins will come out scraping, clawing and continuing to put their best effort into proving it’s one of the NHL’s best teams. Just like it did on Monday.