"Nobody Said It Was Going to be Easy"

WHAT HAPPENED
The Rangers earned a 5-3 win over the Penguins in Game 6 on Friday at PPG Paints Arena to even the series. Game 7 will take place on Sunday in New York.
"Nobody said it was going to be easy, you know?" defenseman Kris Letang said. "They're a really good team. They have a lot of skilled players that can score goals. It's a race to 4 and we have to regroup, stay positive, and get the job done."

OVERALL ASSESSMENT
That one was disappointing, to say the least. For a second straight game with a chance to eliminate their opponent, the Penguins got out to a 2-0 lead… and then watched that lead evaporate. What made this one especially frustrating is that the Penguins really did do everything right in the first period. Not only did they play the right way, they embodied the mantra 'Just Play.'
They didn't run around trying to get retribution on Jacob Trouba for the defenseman's high hit on Sidney Crosby in Game 5 that sidelined the captain for tonight's contest. Instead, the Penguins let their play do the talking. They were on their toes and dictating the terms, and got rewarded with goals from Jeff Carter and Bryan Rust. But they got away from that in the second period, and the Rangers capitalized.
After getting cross-checked into the boards without a penalty being called, Evan Rodrigues took a retaliatory roughing minor - and the Rangers struck just five seconds into their man-advantage. From there, the game started to turn.
"We were in a good place," head coach Mike Sullivan said. "I think our team was playing well. We give them a power play and they score, and now it's a one-goal game. It's a game of momentum. I think I'm probably stating the obvious, but the special teams was the difference. We've got to be better. We've got to be better on the power play, we got to be better on the penalty kill."
The Rangers simply dominated in that area of the game. After Mika Zibanejad got his second of the night to even the score 1:16 later, the Penguins headed to a two-man advantage. But after not being able to convert two minutes of 5-on-3 time in Game 5, they again failed to capitalize, hardly generating anything and giving up a glorious shorthanded chance to Zibanejad, who hit the post.
"I just think that the couple of 5-on-3s that we got, we were a little bit deliberate with our decision-making and with our execution," Sullivan said. "As a result, I think we're predictable. When the power play's firing on all cylinders, those guys are snapping it around. There's a lot of motion, there's a lot of instinctive play and they're hard to handle."
After that, the Rangers got a four-minute power play after Mike Matheson caught Frank Vatrano with a high stick and drew blood, and this time, needed 51 seconds to convert. But just a few minutes later, Evgeni Malkin scored a HUGE late goal to even the score at 3-3 going into the third. The Penguins were counting on him to step up in Crosby's absence, and he did in this moment, intercepting a pass from Trouba at his own blue line and converting a breakaway.
"I thought Geno's goal at the end of the second was a big boost for the group," Sullivan said. "So, I thought he had a strong game."
After a pretty evenly-played final frame, the Rangers took the lead with just 1:28 remaining in regulation before icing the victory with an empty-netter that came with 26.4 seconds left.
"I think our third period was good tonight. I thought we carried the pace and had a lot of chances," Matheson said. "I think the issue has more been the second period, where we get on our heels a little bit and can't capture our game quick enough. I'm not sure what the cause of it is exactly, but that's definitely an area that we need to get better at.
"It's not going to be a perfect game where we score a couple goals, stay up all game and play a perfect game. They are going to have their pushes. They might score one or two. I think we need to do a better job of not getting rattled in those situations and just staying the course."
It's been difficult to watch Pittsburgh's 3-1 series lead evaporate and become a do-or-die, winner-take-all situation. But that being said, this isn't over. Sullivan said of course they hoped to have an effort that would bring them a win, but that didn't happen. Now, they're going to see what they can take from tonight, move by this and just win one game.
"Either we regroup, or we feel sorry and come in to the rink tomorrow and kind of mope around and head off to New York and see what happens in the game kind of thing," Matheson said. "That doesn't sound like a very fun option to me. I don't think anyone in the dressing room feels that way. So, the only option is to just park what happened.
"Regardless of how the games have gone, if we were down 3-1 and came back to make it 3-3 and were headed off to this Game 7, we would be expected to feel a certain way - and that wouldn't help us either going into Game 7. Game 7s are crazy games where anything can happen. It's up to us to bring our best, and see what happens."