Sully Says: "We Missed An Opportunity Tonight"

The Penguins have been incredibly resilient in recent games, battling back to earn points to go on a 7-1-1 run entering Tuesday's matchup with Montreal. They weren't able do that tonight against the struggling Canadiens, who earned a 5-4 win in regulation over the Penguins.

The Penguins couldn't have gotten off to a better start, as Jake Guentzel scored the first of his two goals on the first shift of the game to become the fastest player from his 2013 NHL Draft class to record 400 points, besting the likes of Nathan MacKinnon and Aleksander Barkov.
Evgeni Malkin made it 2-0 with a blast on Pittsburgh's first power play of the game at the 4:49 mark of the opening frame… but Montreal responded with a goal on the next shift. That was the first of four unanswered for the Canadiens, who took a 4-2 lead into the first intermission.
Casey DeSmith led the Penguins onto the ice to start the second period, with Tristan Jarry getting pulled after allowing four goals on seven shots. He went on to make 13 saves in relief, as the Penguins outshot the Canadiens 43-22 on the night.
To Pittsburgh's credit, the group came out and responded the right way in the second. After serving as the overtime hero in Sunday's win over the Rangers, Kris Letang scored his second in as many games to bring the Penguins within one.
Guentzel then got his second of the night, deflecting a shot from Malkin six seconds into a power play (the Penguins went 2-for-4 on the night) to tie it 4-4 after 40 minutes.
But the Canadiens found a way to be opportunistic in the third, with Anthony Richard netting what stood as the game-winner 3:05 in before getting an empty netter from Josh Anderson in the final minute. It didn't help that the Penguins were down to four defensemen in the final frame, as Jeff Petry did not come out for the period, and Jan Rutta left after blocking a shot.
Mike Sullivan said both players are currently being evaluated. Here's what else the Penguins head coach say after the game, which ended a season-long (tied) five-game homestand. The Penguins will now head to New York for two games against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Thursday and Saturday.
On this being the third time Tristan has been pulled from a game in the last couple of weeks, and if there is anything health-related still going on with him, or if he is just struggling: "He's fine from a health standpoint. We're just trying to get him up to speed here on the fly, and it's a bit of a challenge. We're working at it. We're trying to get him reps in practice. We're doing our best there."
On if it's concerning that it's mid-March and Tristan is still getting up to speed:"Well, I don't know if that's the right word. It is what it is, you know? Like, he's had a challenging year from an injury standpoint. This is just circumstantial. Nobody can really control that. We just have to control what we can, and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to find opportunities to get him reps in practice, and give him a chance to build and develop his game and his foundation. Then obviously, he's going to get some of that through the games. It's just the reality of the circumstance at this point. What I will tell you is that although I didn't think they got a lot of looks, the ones they got were high quality. And I think our team, as a whole, has to do a better job there."
On how he assesses this game and his team's performance: "I don't know. It's obviously not good enough, because we didn't end up on the right side of the result. I thought we worked hard throughout the course of the game. We didn't always work smart. And as a result, I think some of the looks that they got, even though they didn't get very many of them, the ones they got were high quality. I think that's an area where we've got to do a better job, on just cutting down the quality of the looks. I think structure as part of that, making sure we don't chase one mistake with another one. Usually, that's when high-quality looks present themselves. So, there's a number of areas. We'll look at it, we'll try to learn from it. We're going to try to get better and then we're going to move by it. We can't change it now. Obviously, we missed an opportunity tonight. We've got a lot of them moving forward. We got to get ready for them."