Penguins/Kraken Recap: Pens fade away again, lose 4-1 to Seattle

Evgeni Malkin injured early, Pens lose defensive composure late. It adds up to what wasn’t a fun Saturday in Seattle!

Pregame

More changes than normal for the Penguins. There’s a whole new and all-Ryan third pair with Graves and Shea getting back into the lineup. Boko Imama makes his Pittsburgh NHL debut, Blake Lizotte remains under the weather and Bryan Rust misses a game due to injury. Joel Blomqvist hops in the cage.

First period

Slow start for the Penguins, Seattle has the better of the play territoriality but are kept mostly to the outside.

Evgeni Malkin left the game after his leg buckles awkwardly. He would attempt to return for another shift after leaving for the lockerroom but again couldn’t continue and was right back out of it.

Pittsburgh gets the first power play, doesn’t do much with it.

Erik Karlsson hit the post, Drew O’Connor made a power move and nearly scored but otherwise a pretty quiet period. Shots are 7-7, game is still looking for its first goal.

Second period

The Pens start pretty well with four straight shots to start the period, but Kris Letang turns the puck over and Seattle scores on the rush. It could have been a conventional 2-on-1 but Chandler Stephenson made the really heady play to leave a back pass instead of forcing one over. Andre Burakovsky skated into that and passed over to the left for Oliver Bjorkstand to hammer home. The Kraken break the ice 2:16 into the the middle frame.

Fortunately for the Pens, there is a response goal in short order. Rickard Rakell passes out from behind the net and Sidney Crosby is there to fire it in. 1-1 game.

The Pens keep up the pressure but can’t get any more by Joey Daccord. Cody Glass takes the first Pittsburgh penalty with 4:05 to go in the period. Letang makes a bad mistake by throwing a cross-check during the PK and he guts rung up to give the Kraken 1:20 worth of a 5v3.

Seattle uses their timeout to draw up a play and regroup. They keep zone control but the Pens fight them off for a while. Finally, with only a handful of seconds left, Vince Dunn booms a shot from the point to the top of the net. 2-1 SEA back in front.

Seattle scores two of the three goals, but overall it wasn’t a bad period for the Pens, scoreboard notwithstanding. Scoreboard is where it counts, though, and they’re in need of a third period comeback.

Third period

Crosby and the first line throw everything but the kitchen sink at Daccord early on and he is right there with them to stop it all, including a Rakell tip shot from the slot.

Play goes the other way and Jared McCann makes a beautiful pass from the corner for Eeli Tolvanen to lean into a quick shot after some shoddy d-zone coverage by the Pens that sees Michael Bunting follow Erik Karlsson into the corner against one opponent and Matt Grzelcyk skate himself out of the play to mark the player going behind the net. Nice shot, though. 3-1.

It had been a long while since the last Pittsburgh power play, they finally earn their second of the afternoon with 10:23 to play. They’re unable to do anything with it.

Erik Karlsson did well to skate away from Matty Beniers but then fired a backhand pass directly at Kaapo Kakko for unknown reasons. That sprung those two Kraken on a 2-on-1 against only Grzelcyk. The defender’s job is to not allow a pass through, so of course Grzelcyk allowed the pass through and Beniers slammed home another goal for Seattle. 4-1.

Imama takes a late game penalty and tries to get Jamie Oleksiak to fight but it proves fruitless.

Luckily the game ends and the Pens can move on.

Some thoughts

• It’s perhaps fitting or maybe ironic or maybe ironically fitting that only 11 days after providing the proverbial straw to break the back that was Tristan Jarry’s NHL career, the Kraken were the opponents again, and Pittsburgh used the goalie they chose to bring up and jettison Jarry for in Blomqvist. Jarry gave up a goal on the first shot he saw to put the Pens in a whole just two minutes into the game and only stopped 14 of 17 on the night in the loss. Blomqvist had Jarry beat to only give up one goal in the first 37 minutes of the game. The result was similar but the reasons behind it
• Crazy stat from the always great Bob Grove: Here in Game No. 51 of the year, it’s only the eighth game of the season for the Pens that was 0-0 when the first period was over. In what floored me, Pittsburgh lost all eight of those games (and nine straight, dating back to last year). You’d think 0-0 through 20 is a good thing, but it hasn’t been for the Pens.
• The Malkin injury coming one game after the Rust injury really puts the Pens in deep trouble as far as the remaining skill in the lineup. (Rust is said to be day-to-day, at least, but updates have been vague). That left knee for Malkin has been through the ringer over his career, we’ll see what damage may have been done. No doctor here but it can’t be a good thing for a leg to bend the way his did.
• That O’Connor-Hayes-Tomasino line is cooking right now. Lines had no choice but to get blended up after Malkin left, but O’Connor was at 88.5% 5v5 xGF% and Hayes at 90.6% per Moneypuck. Both were impactful, holding onto pucks in the zone and standing out in good ways, hopefully they get a chance to be united together in the future.
• Not standing out, the new third pair. It’s understandable why the Pens wanted to switch things up and move on from P.O. Joseph and Owen Pickering after those two struggled collectively and individually in recent games. But in proof that different =/= better, we present Graves (20.8% xGF% through two periods, worst on the team) and Shea (22.3% through two). It’s clear by now the Penguins don’t employ any good answers currently for third period defensemen, so the search for passable play will have to continue.
• Then again, the top guys were having problems too. Letang was all around the early action, his flub on a shot led to the Seattle rush the other way. Then he assisted on the Pens’ second period goal. He followed that up by going to the box while already on the penalty kill in a play that a veteran can’t make to cross-check a guy. Often the refs might cut you a break for being on the PK but if it’s egregious enough, it doesn’t leave much of a choice.
• To key it all off, Grzelcyk’s play in the defensive zone continues to sag to new lows that stand out when he’s not masking it with some assists.
• The difference of this game was early in the third. Daccord was awesome all game and put up a brick wall making more than a few rapid fire stops — and some dangerous ones too. Then the play goes the other way, the Pens have poor coverage on the rush (nothing new there) and the puck is in the net and Seattle has a comfortable two-goal lead. From there some defensive breakdowns did what they do late in games when the Pens seem to sense victory is slipping away and let up or just make errors.

Road trip rolls back to California on Monday night in San Jose, it’s now down to 2-3 with two straight losses. The Sharks are by far the worst in the NHL, but on a long road trip with their best players dropping like flies the Pens might not be much better at the moment.