Pens' Thump the Blues 3-2 in Shootout Win

The Penguins drew first blood at 14:42 in the first period, courtesy of that scoring machine … Chad Ruhwedel. Assisted by Marcus Pettersson and Radim Zohorna, it was the former Lord of Stupid Penalties’ third goal this season, a career high. Every little bit helps.

Another Pen who’s approaching a career-high season goal total is Mike Matheson. Kasperi Kapanen may not be scoring a lot these days, but he nailed a perfect cross-ice pass to Otter, who came over with a laser over Ville Husso’s stick for his ninth goal of the season at 10:52 in the second, one away from tying his all-time season goal total. Tots for everyone on that play.

However, Pens announcer Steve Mears kept predicting that Perron would score the Blues’ first goal, and so he did at 16:55 with a breakaway wrap-around on Tristan Jarry to make it 2-1 Pens. Jarry’s tendency to believe dekes is SO irritating. Please work on that, Blue Steel.

Another irritating moment came at 1:49 in the third period, when Marcus Pettersson missed a block and Ivan Barbashev took full advantage, launching one around Jarry’s glove side and tying the game with help from Brandon Saad. Did you know Saad is from Pittsburgh? Mears and Bob Errey only mentioned it, I don’t know, about twenty times, but I digress. 

However, luck was on the Pens’ side as regulation drew to a close. The Blues have positively sucked in OT this year. Not that they didn’t give their best effort in this bonus hockey period, which was five minutes of speed and shots and all the things I love about this game--other than no score. Time for a shootout!

Good news--Jordan Kyrou, Perron, and Vladimir Tarasenko all got denied by Jarry (and it’s okay if you still remember when Jarry in a shootout was a scary thing). Bad news--so did Jake Guentzel, Sidney Crosby, and Tanger. Ryan O’Reilly was also denied, but Bryan Rust was not. Rusty is an incredible five-for-five in his career for winning shootouts, including this one. The Blues are also five-for-five in 2022 … for losing in OT. 

I’m taking nothing away from Husso--the kid is good. Really good. If you like goalie battles, this was a good one. We’re going to see both of these teams in the playoffs. 

Everyone just has to hope that when they play the Blues, it goes into overtime.