So.  Ottawa. The redheaded stepchild of Canadian hamlets.  EK’s first team.  One might hope he would feel some old pangs and ask for a trade back to his roots.  But in the post-Melnyk era, apparently the Sens aren’t that dumb anymore.  Anyway, Ottawa came in feeling its oats after hanging a 3-zip shutout on Carolina Friday night.  Pens fans were finally recovering from their well past 4-hour erection after the veritable explosion of goals Thursday night.

So, the good news.  Jarry did NOT give up a goal in the first two shots, which he had done in NINE of 11 prior games.  Yours truly has been a frequent defender of TJ, but that’s a woof stat if there ever was one.  Bad news, he gave it up on the 4th shot.  He’s developed a habit of over-committing like a maniac on shooters in close and after Girwho left him at the poutine vendor he skated back just in time for Chabot to launch one off his pads and in.  Sid valiantly assumed the position for a second while Letang stood around looking for something to do, but it ended up as it frequently has. 1-0 for the Other Tkatchuk’s team.  [Side note: I always confuse the two, but I figured out a way to tell them apart: Matthew (FL) has a ring, and Brady (OTT) looks like he finger-banged a cousin at a family gathering in their youth.]  Shot totals were very low over all, with the Pens managing an anemic 6 on the period.  3 of those were pretty high danger, but Ullmark played up to his bloated paycheck.  Even better, Pettersson went down awkwardly on a 50-50 puck late in the period and is presumed ded.

EK admitted during an interview at the intermission that they are giving up too many chances, which was a level of personal accountability even more shocking than his new short hairdo.  He wasn’t kidding, and to continue the theme, Geno took a lazy Russian stupid tripping penalty 45 seconds into the 2nd.  The PK unit didn’t exactly shine, but Jarry was there to make some good saves.  Killed.  On the radio, Bourque commented that Sully has supposedly yelled at Geno in the past on those penalties and was apparently REALLY pissed this time.  So much so that he punished Geno by (checks notes) not only NOT having him miss a shift, but double shifting him a few times in the ensuing minutes to play with Sid.  The Sens spent most of the 2nd putting on a skating and passing clinic 5v5 and on 1 other PP, but Jarry was truly excellent and kept them off the board.  Sid, whose been in a miserable goal scoring funk, had a golden chance very late in the period off a quasi-2 on 1 with Rust but Ullmark, who had seen comparatively little action on the night, set down his comic book and made a brilliant save.  Goddammit.  That sequence did seem to wake Sid up a bit though and he generated some good shots and passes in the ensuing minutes.  He still didn’t score.  But he could have…  Anyway 1-0 Sens after 2. Shot totals were 21-18 Sens, though that was misleading because the Pens launched a flurry right at the end of the period after being soundly outplayed for the first 18 minutes.

The Pens showed some better urgency to start the 3rd and were rewarded 2 ½ minutes in when Ullmark gave up a juicy rebound and Lizotte was there to bang it home.  If we give him credit for a “fight” when he took a semi-stupid roughing penalty after Accari got lit up (on a clean hit by the way) in the middle of the 2nd, he was an assist away from a Gordie Howe HT.  They had momentum and were carrying play until about 4 minutes later when Graves and Griz combined to let a cheap backdoor deflection go past Jarry.  Graves missed the cross cleanly and Griz did precisely dick while his guy parked at the far post to bank it in off his skate.  In the spirit of fighting back, they gave up a breakaway 2 minutes later but Jarry defended it well.  There were 2 more chances in the immediate aftermath and EK actually did a thing on the final one to prevent an easy goal.  The ice was pretty much tilted the wrong way for the next 8+minutes when Letang, instead of making a stupid stretch pass, skated the puck the length of the ice and then fired a wrister from the blue line.  There was inexplicably actual traffic in front of the net and the puck found its way past Ullmark.  2-2.  Some back and forth for the remaining 4 minutes but nothing to jump out of your seat over, and off to OT they went. 

The Pens almost immediately gave up a 3-1 but Ottawa didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory with how they handled it to the point that Letang finally got back to help out and prevented a legit scoring chance.  Right after that Rust made a great move in front of the net and looked like he had the game winner, but he either hit the post or the defender got behind Ullmark to keep out.  You can guess what came next.  Puck goes the other way, and ‘Brady the Incestuous’ snaps a wicked wrister past Jarry.  Ideally TJ gets that one, but it was a piss missile so it’s hard to put too much on him for that one.

Musings:

• The advanced stats types will likely see figures like Corsi and other nonsense and conclude Geno played a good game.  That would be false.  Bunting carried that line tonight.  Geno was mostly invisible when he wasn’t padding his lead on all time penalty minutes for the franchise.
• I was formulating a theory that Sid isn’t scoring because he’s not really getting to the scoring areas, but from about the middle of the 2nd period on he actually did that alot.  Dude is just snake bitten right now.  I’ll say this, he was a goddamn backchecking FORCE tonight.  It’s absolutely not about his effort level.
• TJ was very solid.  There always seems to be a squeaker in the mix, but they don’t get the loser point tonight without him. 
• Compelling side story was developing when Ottawa’s Forsberg, who was supposed to start, ripped his dik in the warmup and Ottawa dragged the EBUG out of the stands onto the bench as the backup.  Fortunately for the Pens, he did not get a chance to have some vomitous feel-good story play out against them.
• Pens had to play with 5 D after Pettersson went out late in the 1st and weren’t embarrassing.  Letang was, dare I say, pretty good.  So there’s that.

That’s it.  Y’all be cool.