Penguins/Wild Recap: Pens lag behind, get blown out

Pregame

The Penguins only make one change from their last lineup a million days ago, Sam Poulin replaces Philip Tomasino on the third line.

First period

The Penguins have a decent initial start. By that, I mean Sidney Crosby gets a shot on goal – it would be about 18 minutes until they got a second.

From there, it got ugly. Kris Letang and Ryan Shea end up in the same corner of the rink, leaving the front of the net open. The puck gets there to Matt Boldy, and woo boy, that’s not who you want to see with the puck immediately in front of the net and no defense in sight. 1-0 for the Wild 3:59 in.

The tough times continue, Blake Lizotte’s stick gets away from him as he tries to lift Jacob Middleton’s stick and instead hacks Middleton near the eye. Not good, Middleton leaves the ice in extreme duress and Lizotte is assessed a four minute double minor. The Pens almost make it out unscathed, but Joel Eriksson Ek tips a Zeev Buium shot from right in front of the net and there’s not much Arturs Silovs can do about that. 2-0 Wild.

With the Pens playing incredibly passive and basically standing around in the defensive zone, Minnesota adds another. Jonas Brodin sends a pass over to Marcus Johansson for a shot to change the angle on Silovs, Crosby can’t block it and the puck sails in. 3-0.

Pittsburgh has three total shots, Minnesota has three goals (on nine shots). Whether it’s jet lag, rust from not playing in forever or something else, the Pens are in bad, bad shape tonight.

Second period

Welp, it doesn’t get much better. Silovs denies Mats Zuccarello from in front but the Wild get the puck to Middleton at the point. He slings the puck in, Kirill Kaprizov gets a deflection from in front that raises the puck up. Oof. 4-0.

Dan Muse calls timeout to break the momentum. He also switches the goalies out and puts Sergei Murashov on, ending Silovs’s night.

The Pens get another power play, it goes no better.

Shea and Letang get to more problems, Shea holds the puck for a long time and limply goes to the weak side with it instead of going north for an uncontrolled exit. Letang can’t get to the puck rimming across the boards but Kaprizov does. Not the guy you want to see pop up there. Kaprizov throws it to the net and there’s a sort of ‘welcome to the NHL moment’ for Murashov to see Boldy do a fly by and tip the puck to the cop corner of the net out of no where. It goes quickly like that at this level. 5-0.

Third period

Yep, there was in fact a third period. The Pens get a few more shots from the perimeter than they did in the early going, but it’s all low percentage one-and-dones. Clock drains out and this one will never have to be talked about again.

Some thoughts

• Putting Murashov in the net with 18:51 to go in second period was an interesting choice, considering the Pens play again tomorrow night. That tactic might have been more about shaking up the team up than pointing a finger a Silovs, who had to deal with deflections all night, while his teammates could barely muster a shot on goal at all. That said, with a game coming up, teams usually don’t play two goalies in this situation. We’ll see how that one works out for Muse to buck conventional wisdom and try something outside the norm; but you really have to hope the decision doesn’t end up ruining tomorrow at the sake of chasing something today that was already out of reach by putting both goalies in there today.

• Other than that, not too much to think about or add to this exhibition tonight. This is one to flush and forget if there ever was. The Pens were bad and uncompetitively so to a man. Maybe we should have seen it coming with the first game back from the long trip, first game in almost a week in general and running up against a team that’s been a buzzsaw lately (Minnesota is 8-1-1 in November and playing legitimately excellent these days). All the signs were there that this wasn’t going to be an easy one, it turned out way worse than that.

Pittsburgh gets back at it tomorrow against Seattle, hopefully with a little more gusto.