The good news is that the Penguins played much better on Tuesday night versus Dallas compared to their showing on Saturday in St. Louis… but unfortunately, they didn’t get the result.
After taking a 1-0 lead into the first intermission on a late tally from Bryan Rust – his fifth of the year – following an excellent opening period, the Stars battled back with four unanswered to come away with a 4-1 victory. Though the Penguins ended up with 39 shots on talented young goaltender Jake Oettinger, they couldn’t get another one past him.
“I think we let them hang around,” captain Sidney Crosby said. “We couldn’t build on our lead, and they hung around and were opportunistic. I think with the start we had, with the chances we had, obviously it would have been nice to have a bit of a cushion.”
“I think offensively, we should try and get a few more bodies in front of net, and we’ll try to score some ugly goals,” Rust added.
Penguins defenseman John Ludvig, who made his NHL debut, left the game in the second period and did not return. He was down after delivering a big open-ice hit in the neutral zone on Stars forward Radek Faksa, getting checked on by medical and training personnel before being helped to his feet and skating off the ice with some help from his teammates.
“It’s extremely unfortunate,” Rust said. “Any time you see things like that happen, you just kind of hold your breath for a second, and hope everything is okay.”
Head Coach Mike Sullivan said that Ludvig is continuing to be evaluated at this point, calling it a scary moment when you see a player in that situation.
“It’s tough to see that happen,” Crosby said. “Obviously, he looked like he was in a bad spot. Just a weird play. He goes to make a hit; it looks like he took the guy’s helmet in the jaw. That’s scary to see, but when you see a guy go down like that you want to get the win for them. You want to play hard, and unfortunately, we weren’t able to do that.”
Penguins goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic, who’s good at offering candid assessments of his own play, said he made the wrong decision with an aggressive pokecheck that led to Dallas’ third goal early in the final frame.
“I got to just let whatever happens, happens. Behind the play we had some back pressure coming,” he said. “We talked the last couple days about maybe playing too loose in the St. Louis game, and I thought tonight overall, we did a great job of putting pucks behind them and being disciplined in that aspect. I got to do the same thing and make some better decisions tonight.”
Apart from that pretty glaring gaffe, it was actually been a solid performance from Nedeljkovic in just his second start of the season following a strong Penguins debut on Oct. 14 versus Calgary. It makes the loss, Pittsburgh’s third straight setback, even tougher to swallow. But overall, he and the Penguins feel like they’re close to turning this around.
“It just takes one bounce, one lucky bounce, honestly. I think that’ll help. We just got to stay with it, stick with it. When you do the right things and you do it long enough, you get rewarded one way or the other. Pucks will start going in for us. I’ll start making a couple more saves, and Jars (Tristan Jarry) and I, we'll tighten our stuff up on our end and hopefully give the guys in front of us a better chance to win on a nightly basis.”
Here's what Sullivan had to say after the contest, the first of a four-game homestand that continues on Thursday versus Colorado.
Can you give us an update on John, and just the emotions you were all kind of feeling during those couple of minutes when he was down? “Well, he's continuing to be evaluated at this point. That's all I can really give you from a status standpoint. It’s a scary moment. It's a scary moment when you see a player like that. It appeared that he almost got knocked out on the hit, so those are scary to watch. We’re hopeful he's going to be okay. He's being evaluated right now.”
You clearly weren't happy with what happened in St. Louis Saturday. Did you see any carryover from that game to tonight's game? Or was tonight a completely different set of circumstances? “Oh, it was a much different game, the way the game was played. I thought the first period, our team was terrific. We had a number of really high-quality scoring chances, could have scored more than we did. I thought their goalie played really well in that first half of the game. So, I just think it's a whole different set of circumstances tonight than it was in St. Louis, I thought in St. Louis, we beat ourselves in so many ways. Tonight, we're playing against a good team. I think the game was a whole lot closer than the score indicates. We've got to figure out a way to learn something from it, we got to move by it, and get ready for the next one.”
Oettinger was obviously really good, especially early on. At the same time, what can you do offensively to finish some of these chances? It's not a matter of looks, is it? “No, I thought we had a lot of high-quality opportunities, you know? Tonight, it didn’t go in the net for us. But I think there are things that we can do to increase our chances, like fighting for the blue paint, making the goalie’s sightlines difficult, creating broken plays. A lot of times, those broken plays are the hardest ones to defend, because it forces a lot of decision-making and hesitation. The goaltenders have to fight to find the puck in the chaos. (Kind of like their goals?) Yeah. When you looked at the goals that they scored, they're right at the blue paint. I think we can do a little bit of a better job as far as getting there, and I think if we do, we'll create more of those broken play opportunities. I think our guys do their best work when they fight for those loose pucks, because they have good instincts and they can see the opportunities that are created off of it.”
You said that you liked this game more than the St. Louis game, but is there a level of frustration settling in at all, and how important is it at this point in the season to fend off those feelings? “Yeah, guys are frustrated because they want to get results. That's the nature of sports. These guys are competitive guys, and they care an awful lot. So, when it doesn't go the right way, of course frustration sets in – but we've got to find a way to get over it. That’s what I said to guys after the game, is we got an awful lot of hockey in front of us. There's a lot of areas where we've got to get better in order to set ourselves for success. I think there are still areas where we have to be harder to play against, by nature of just making better decisions with the puck and not allowing teams some of the looks that they're getting against our net. So, I still think we've got to continue to strive to get better in that area of the rink. But we can't get discouraged. We just got to get more determined. We'll go back to work tomorrow, and we'll see what we can take from this one. We'll watch some film, and we'll go out and practice, and get ready for the next one.”
When the power play struggles the way it has been, would you like to see that top unit simplify things a little bit, and just a more of a shooter’s mentality? “I think anytime a power play struggles, simplifying the game is always part of the solution. So, we've got to continue to work out at it, and we can't get frustrated. We just got to keep digging in. But I do think that simplifying the game and putting the puck at the net a little bit more and getting that net presence, making the sidelines difficult, creates broken play opportunities on the power play where we've got an extra stick and might be able to utilize the man-advantage.”
Are you happy with the physicality level of your team at this point? Or is that something that you think has to ramp up? “I think we can get better at it. You can define physicality different ways. I think it's about being competitive on pucks. I think it's about fighting for the blue paint at both ends of the rink. We're trying to push the guys to get better and just raise the awareness and the compete level in those areas. I think we can always grow and get better there. But that's an area for sure that I think we can improve.”
