Needing a win to stay alive in the series and postseason, Pittsburgh Penguins head coach Dan Muse decided to make a few changes to the lineup, none of which was more notable than replacing starting goaltender Stuart Skinner with backup Arturs Silovs. All season long Muse had given his goaltenders (including the traded Tristan Jarry) a pretty even workload, with Silovs starting 38 games and Skinner and Jarry combining for 40 starts (Sergei Murashov had the remaining four). Any way you sliced it, the Penguins weren’t going to be relying on their goaltending to get them far this season, and in fact Pittsburgh and the Philadelphia Flyers were tied for the ninth-worst save percentage in the NHL this season. With the Penguins struggling to score goals, the only logical answer was to switch things up in goal and see if Silovs would do a better job at holding the Flyers back.
And so that’s how it went in Game 4 on Saturday: Silovs made 28 saves on 30 shots and held Philadelphia to two goals on 3.68 expected goals. That was more than enough for Pittsburgh as, after Sidney Crosby’s first period power play goal, they would not relinquish the lead again and skated out of Xfinity Mobile Arena with a 4-2 win. Three guys I called out in Saturday’s Gameday ‒ Sidney Crosby, Rickard Rakell, and Kris Letang ‒ all scored. The Penguins got two more even strength goals, although one (Letang’s game-winner in the third period) was at 4-on-4, but Rakell’s goal came after a great individual effort to harass Flyers’ goaltender Dan Vladar behind the net, force him into a turnover, and dunk the puck into the open goal. It was indicative of the kind of tenacity that had been missing from Pittsburgh to that point in the series, and it led to their highest expected goals for of the series.
An ongoing issue in this series for the Penguins is their bottom six. The fourth line of Connor Dewar, Noel Acciari, and Blake Lizotte has become the third line because the third line (typically Ben Kindel and Elmer Soderblom, with Anthony Mantha or Justin Brazeau) have not been meeting their expectations, at least not offensively. I’m not sure that sheltering those guys has been helpful, but as the series comes back to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia has to focus on line matching again, Dan Muse is going to have to find ways for those guys to contribute. Really the common denominator is Mantha, as he has been a shell of his regular season self (as has been the scouting report on him since forever). Mentally he just doesn’t seem to be with it, for whatever reason, whether it’s not contributing with his offensive production or taking bad penalties that have led to the Penguins losing momentum or allowing goals. Unfortunately I don’t see a great solution to Mantha’s magic ineptitude, and Brazeau has not been much better, so…I guess they’ll just have to suffer with it!
LGP