The Penguins saw their eight-game point streak (6-0-2) come to an end against the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday by a score of 5-2.
“They’re quick in transition and they’ve got a lot of speed,” Captain Sidney Crosby said. “You’ve just got to make sure that the puck is in those gray areas. If you turn them over there, then they can make you pay pretty quick.”
Prior to puck drop, it was announced that forward Justin Brazeau is day-to-day with an upper-body injury. Phil Tomasino took his spot on the second line, and Harrison Brunicke slotted in for Matt Dumba.
It wasn’t the most ideal start to the game, as the Penguins quickly saw themselves down 2-0 within the first three minutes of the opening period. The Jets, who now improved to 9-3-0 on the season, won the Presidents’ Trophy last year with 116 points.
“You get down and you start chasing the game a little bit,” Crosby said. “It’s tough to fight that, but you’ve got to find a way to stay patient. We’ve got to understand that there is a lot of hockey left. Unfortunately, they got to build on that lead.”
In the second period, the Jets continued to add to their lead. After Penguins goaltender Arturs Silovs bobbled the puck, he threw his stick at Winnipeg’s forward Kyle Connor, which resulted in a penalty shot. The seven-time 30-goal scorer was able to beat Silovs and make it 4-0.
“It’s kind of a misplay, he came in there so fast, I thought he was going to come in a little bit slower, so I didn’t have time to look up where he was,” Silovs said. “He got it barely over my glove, but credit to him.”
Crosby was able to get the team’s first goal of the game in the late stages of the second period on the power play. The Jets came into today’s game with the league’s top-ranked penalty kill.
The Penguins showed a lot of fight during the third period in their attempt to tie the game. It was the fourth line of Blake Lizotte, Connor Dewar, and Noel Acciari who sparked life in the team. Lizotte’s power move to the net caused enough commotion that he was able to get the puck past goaltender Eric Comrie and cut the Jet's lead in half.
However, as the Penguins continued to press late, the Jets were able to get the empty-netter to seal the game at 5-2. Pittsburgh has one more game left on its four-game road trip when they visit the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday night.
“That’s a good team that we played. I feel like that it wasn’t our best,” Crosby said. “We’ve got to respond and bounce back and make sure that we finish off the trip good.”
PICKERING PLAYS IN HOMETOWN FOR THE FIRST TIME
Being born in St. Adolphe, Manitoba, Owen Pickering was able to see the Jets return to Winnipeg when he was seven years old. As a die-hard Jets fan, Pickering said that he has gone to many games growing up and watched the team play all of the time on TV.
For Saturday’s game, Head Coach Dan Muse gave Pickering the honor of starting the game in front of all of his friends and family in attendance.
“It means a lot. It’s pretty cool, and it’s something that I’m super grateful for. It’ll be nice to have them there.”
With around 25 members of his family at the game, it was a full-circle moment for the defenseman who played for the RINK Hockey Academy team in Winnipeg before going to juniors.
Hear more from Dan Muse on tonight’s game against Winnipeg:
What are the overall things that you guys need to clean up?
Definitely too many odd-man rushes, which really hurt us. I think they came for different reasons. In the third period, you’re down the way that we are, some of those are just going to come off from taking away time and space. We still need to make sure that we’re backing each other up. Some of them, I think, came off of decisions, some came off of a number of reasons. Clearly, there’s way too much coming at us that way. You also have a lot of situations there where they're coming in, the numbers might be even, but they have a lot of space. And when you give a team like that too much space, you're not going to like the chances you’re giving up. It was a big part of it there tonight.
With the eight-game point streak coming to an end, is this loss easier to handle? Or does it still sting a good bit?
Losing always stinks. Anytime there's an opportunity there to get points, and we don't do it, you're not going to be happy with it. As we go through the year, though, we are trying to move on from game to game, where we're taking things that we like and that we can build off of, and continuing to go with those. Even the games that we've won, there's been plenty that we can look back and say, this is an area that needs to improve, and so I think that's a constant evaluation, and we want to be making constant improvements. Obviously, a game like today there, I think we could have made that a lot closer than it ended up being. So, that's on us to make sure that we clean up those areas.
Do you like how the team stuck with it through the second and third periods?
In the third period, there wasn’t a moment when I felt like we stopped playing. I think that the guys kept going. Even on the bench, there was a feeling that we were going to get that next one, but we didn’t. So, we go back, we evaluate, and we look at the areas that we can clean up. There's going to be a lot that we can take away from this game, too, and learn from. The fact that we stuck with it, I give credit to the guys, that has to be there. We have got to make sure that we're not quitting on a game, because things can turn real quick, and we didn't get it to the point where they did tonight.
What are some areas of improvement from Pickering and Brunicke?
We mixed it up a little bit there. We made that decision early on. Sometimes, too, if you’re out there for a couple of quick ones, it’s not necessarily on an individual. It’s just good to give a different feel. That’s what we felt like there tonight. Like all of these games, they’ll be stuff that we’ll look at as a team, and stuff individuals can learn from as well.
