PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – In a game that was all about defense, it was a Pens defenseman with the game-winning, primary assist as the Pens beat Nashville 2-0 and keep their playoff spot in the eighth position.
It was past the midway point of the second period when Brian Dumoulin went down the slot, got a pass from Evgeni Malkin and went fore-hand, back-hand, fore-hand, fore-hand, perfect pass to Jason Zucker who finally beat Predators goalie Juuse Saros for the first goal of the game.
“Geno made a good fake play to find me off the rush,” Dumoulin said. “The pass hit pretty hard, so just catching it. I would have loved the opportunity to shoot it too, but I didn’t really have that option with how hard the pass was. I saw a guy go down and I knew Zucker was open back-door. Just laid one over there.”
Right after the goal, you could see on the replay that Zucker said something to the veteran defenseman.
“I trusted it the whole time,” Zucker said. “I knew he was going to go toe-drag, back-door tap-in. I told him I was just waiting for it.”
“He just said great pass,” Dumoulin contradicted with a smile. “Now he owes me a bottle of wine.”
In the first period Zucker was stopped on three prime chances, part of 43 stops by the Nashville All-Star goalie. Even with those saves, the Pens kept playing the right way.
“We were trying to stay with it and make his job difficult, his sight lines difficult,” said Pens head coach Mike Sullivan. “I thought our guys did a real good job especially from a mind-set standpoint. We didn’t get antsy, we didn’t turn into a high-risk team. We kept trying to play the game the right way.”
“He played well,” Jake Guentzel said of Saros. “We knew going in he was a great goaltender. That’s the biggest thing for us, we can’t get frustrated. We have to make sure we keep going.”
“I thought we played on our toes the most of the night even when we were up,” Zucker said. “We kept pushing and kept keeping them on their toes in the second period. When we are playing at our best, we have o-zone time, possession time and we are keeping teams on their heels.”
Guentzel would score seconds into a power play in the third period on a perfect shot-pass by Rickard Rakell for his 34th of the season. Kris Letang would get the other assist.
Tristan Jarry made a couple of breakaway stops as part of the 28-save shutout as he returned to net. It’s the 13th career shutout and 115th career win in his 200th game.
“I thought Jarry played really well,” Sullivan said. “I don’t think they had a lot of quality looks, but the ones that they did, Jarry made a couple of good saves. He was there when we needed him. The team as a whole defended hard. I thought we did a much better job defending the scoring area.”
“At home, the fans were into it,” Guentzel said. “It hasn’t been easy for us lately. For us to get the two points, hopefully gets us some traction here.”
“I think its important that we feel good about it tonight,” Sullivan said. “That’s a competitive team that we played. They beat some pretty good teams as of late. We need to feel good about it and the confidence moving forward.”
Wild Card Standings
· Islanders-76 games 87 points
· Pens-75 games 84 points
· Florida-76 games 83 points
· Ottawa-75 games 79 points
· Buffalo-73 games 77 points
Notes
· Malkin continued his home point streak, now at 10
· Since January 10, Malkin has 32 points at home, most home points in the NHL over that time
· Jarry’s 13th shutout ranks him 3rd on the Pens all-time list
· Guentzel now has 10 goals in his last 13 games
Up Next
Pens host the best team in hockey, the Boston Bruins Saturday at 3p