Alex Galchenyuk played 19 seconds during their wild 3-goal third-period comeback Wednesday night. He was on the ice for the goal scored prior to Murray getting pulled. He was relegated to the fourth line with Lafferty and Riikola for this game. Despite the media heavily hitting us with “he tries so hard after practice” feel good stories, Mike Sullivan seems to think that if it walks and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Live look at Mike Sullivan talking about Galchenyuk’s recent performance:
With that rant over let’s get into the game.
For just the second time all night, the Penguins stepped onto the ice to start the third period. Prior to this, their only highlight was a nasty Jake Guentzel goal in the first on their second shot of the period seventeen minutes and fifty-seven seconds into the period.
JAKE GUENTZEL (15) Assisted by Malkin (14) & Simon (10) @ 17:57
The Pens came out with their comeback pants on to start the third, but had to change them into depends after Galchenyuk took a tripping penalty three minutes in. The Penguins were finally able to kill off a penalty and we went back to 5v5. With some decisive circling, the puck went from Malkin, to Guentzel, and Guentzel looked up to see Letang and thought “hey, I’ve seen this before.”
KRIS LETANG (6) Assisted by Guentzel (12) & Malkin (15) @ 5:20
The good news, even with the injuries the Penguins have planted this ball of hope inside of us so that even during a game where they didn’t show up, we continued watching because they could turn it on at any moment.
The Pens did start pouring on some chances throughout the third but Korpisalo said no multiple times. The time clicked down. The Columbus fans got loud and good for them, the next thing they have to look forward to is receiving scratch-offs for Christmas.
GAME
Live look at Mike Sullivan on the bus heading to St. Louis, talking to Jake Guentzel
The Penguins made the trip to St. Louis overnight to prepare to take on the defending champs. St. Louis also played last night, a 3-1 win over Dallas. So far this year the Penguins have only failed to get a point in two consecutive games once, October 19th-23rd they lost three straight games in regulation. Other than that stretch, they have followed every loss with at least a point. if not a win. Tonight will be a bigger ask for the Pens, and if they play the way they did last night there isn’t much hope.
It’s going to be Binnington vs Murray in a young goaltending showdown. Matt Murray has struggled lately, but if he wants to put himself back in the good graces of the fans that aren’t against him regardless of what he does, a huge performance tonight would be the thing to do.
The game is on your regular television channels and is also the free game of the day on nhl.com. 8:00 PM. Saturday night. Meet me in the parking lot to crush some Natty’s before puck drop. Let’s Go.