On Monday, the Pittsburgh Penguins saw their six-game winning streak snapped in their final home game before the Olympic break, falling 3-2 to the Ottawa Senators.
“What we had today wasn’t much, and we still hung in there all the way to the end,” Erik Karlsson said. “It’s obviously never fun losing, but I don’t think that we deserved to win this one, even though we were hoping that we could hang in there a little bit to the end and at least get into overtime.”
Even though the Penguins were able to score first, off a pass from Evgeni Malkin to Egor Chinakhov, the Senators controlled the majority of the play. It was goaltender Arturs Silovs who kept his team in it, making several quality saves in the first period.
“I think him and [Skinner] have been standing on their head every night for us and tonight, unfortunately, Artie was forced into that,” Blake Lizotte said. “He did a great job and deserved better from us out in front of him.”
Throughout the first 40 minutes of play, the score was only 1-1 while the Penguins got outshot 22-10 in the process. While the team has been playing incredible hockey since the holiday break, going 13-2-2 in the process, tonight the team struggled to sustain possession and get into the offensive zone.
“I don’t think that we played the game that we have been for the past six weeks,” Karlsson said. “This was probably one of the very few games where we couldn’t seem to figure out how we wanted to play. I don’t think anyone in here, myself included, feels very good about how we started.”
The team also found themselves short-handed a lot throughout the first two periods when they took four straight penalties.
“It’s just too many penalties,” Lizotte said. “It takes guys out of the game. But from a team perspective, that’s disappointing to take that many. But from a PK perspective, really proud of the way the guys battled tonight, even though we didn’t have our best stuff.”
In the third period, Ottawa was able to get their first lead of the game after Tim Stutzle buried the rebound after Drake Batherson’s breakaway opportunity.
Just two minutes later, the Penguins were able to fight and tie the game after Ryan Shea’s shot from the boards snuck past Linus Ullmark, and Novak was there to get his tenth goal of the season.
“I think when you come out flat for two periods and you’re still in the game, you have a chance to win,” Lizotte said on the team’s effort in the third period. “I think there was a little bit of juice there, but overall, you’re not going to win many hockey games playing like that over 60 minutes.”
With just over five-minutes left in regulation, Claude Giroux found himself on a partial breakaway. Silovs stopped the initial shot, but the contact from Karlsson had Giroux crash into the net, which led the puck to cross the goal line.
Head Coach Dan Muse challenged the call for goaltender interference, but after further review, the referees ruled it a goal.
“He came in, I stopped the puck. He goes like 25 miles (per hour) going down,” Silovs said. “What (do) they expect me to do? I would understand if it would go straight away in. Then, I would agree with the call. But it’s a second effort. I don’t really agree with the call.”
Down by one, the Penguins pulled Silovs and tried to tie the game, but couldn’t break the Senators’ defense to beat Ullmark before time ultimately ran out.
The team will have a quick turnaround before traveling to New York to face the Islanders on Tuesday.
“This was not the brand of hockey that we’ve been accustomed to playing,” Karlsson said. “Gotta wash this one away. We know we’re a much better hockey team. We got a big game again tomorrow, and I think everybody’s already looking forward to turning the page.
More from Muse on Monday’s performance against Ottawa:
How did you see the sequence unfold on the game-winning goal? What was the explanation that you received?: I didn’t get an explanation. I saw it as they called a slash, he makes the save, and is run into, no chance at all. There’s nothing else that he can do there. I felt like that was one we could challenge. That’s why I challenged it. I don’t have any explanation.
Was tonight’s game just a flat performance? Is there anything that you can put your finger on?: It was flat, it was execution, races, battles. I think [Silovs] had a really strong game, and our penalty kill did a good job. Outside of that, I don’t think there’s much else I’m walking away here liking.
Is there a way to handle the systems and structure that Ottawa had tonight?: No, we’ve seen it this year. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen it. I do think we can be better. I think there’s been games where we have been better. I don’t think this is going to be like saved all the time. I thought it wasn’t it tonight. You look at the missed opportunities, starting with just our execution coming out of our zone. The first couple of shifts, there’s plays to be made. We’re not making them, or the support is not there. I thought as you got to the end of it, especially the back half of the first and throughout most of the rest of the game, it was just kind of playing into the game that they want to play. And I think we’ve also shown enough throughout the course of the year that we can generate off the forecheck. We can get into the offensive zone. We don’t have to force it early on, and we can generate that way. We weren’t doing that tonight. And so now we spent, it felt like the great, great, great majority of the game either defending or without the puck. And you don’t want to play that game. And so, I mean, that’s a credit to them. They work hard, they check hard, and they’re playing well. But at the same time, I thought a lot of this, we got to look in the mirror tonight in terms of the game that we played. And the only reason that this was a close game was just because of Artie.
With the huge game tomorrow against the Islanders, was tonight a wake-up call for the team?: Because it’s a quick turnaround, like, it’s nice that we get to play tomorrow night, but we also can’t just say that this didn’t happen. Like, we have to be better than this. For me, it’s so far off the mark from where we’ve been playing and where we’re working to get to. And so, it’s an opportunity tomorrow to show ourselves that there’s a much better game that we have the ability to play than that.
You’ve had a couple of challenges this year that haven’t gone your way around the net. Does the league explain what is or isn’t goaltender interference?: Yeah, I think a lot of it also is that there are a lot of factors that are at play. We get all of them. We get the explanations. So, I mean, I would challenge that one again.
