Avalanche Outlast Pens 3-2 in Potential Cup Preview

If you haven’t already heard, the Colorado Avalanche are a really good hockey team. Really good. They lead the NHL in points scored this season, and they are close to unbeatable on their home ice at Ball Arena, aka the Mason Jar. The Penguins knew that they had their work cut out for them in this one, and although they were on the bad side of the 3-2 score, the game could have very easily gone their way.

From the first puck drop, this was a fast, physical game. Guys were getting hit so hard and so frequently that I wondered on Twitter why more of them weren’t coming off the ice doubled over and looking like they were going to hurl, as Brian Dumoulin was shown doing at one point. There were no goals in the first period, although Tristan Jarry and his Colorado counterpart Darcy Kuemper kept very busy making spectacular saves. Kuemper, though, played with fire by leaving enormous gaps on the sides but didn’t get burned because the Pens didn’t take advantage of some well-angled rebounds.

At 9:59 in the second, however, Mikko Rantanen did. Worse, Mike Matheson helped him out by batting the rebound directly in the air at him, and it was nothing for him to swat it over Jarry’s right shoulder. I called Matheson a name that was not Otter when that happened, and I’m not sorry.

But there is Sidney Crosby, and the Pens are always in it when he’s on the ice. He decided to take a little rebound action of his own, taking one of Kris Letang’s and stuffing it past Kuemper’s stick to tie things up at 14:46. The Penguins got to enjoy the tie for a whole … 22 seconds because that’s how long it took for Nicolas Aube-Kubel to fake out Jarry with a slap shot to regain the Avs’ lead.

The third period was a lot of grinding and shoving and some positively gymnastic saves by Jarry, and Matheson redeemed himself at 15:07 with a sharp snap past the left pipe. The good news is that the Pens got to enjoy the tie longer before Devon (The Lesser) Toews caught a board bounce from Nathan MacKinnon and wristed it past Jarry. The bad news? “Longer” was “five seconds.” Yanking Jarry in the final two minutes of regulation proved futile, and it didn’t help that Cale Makar came this close to an empty netter. You know, the highest-scoring defenseman this season. #DodgedThatBullet

Amazingly, there was only one penalty in the game, garnered by Colorado. Considering that the Avs are the most penalized team in the NHL, as should be expected for any team employing  Nazem Kadri, that’s pretty good. Nadri is hurt right now, though, and the Pens didn’t even get a shot off.

The only real mistake the Pens made in this game was Matheson’s misdirected rebound. Other than that, they more than held their own against the literal best team in the NHL right now. In a normal year, the playoffs would be looming, but in this weird season, there’s still a month to go.

This is the time to start getting hot, Penguins.