PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Until Tuesday night, Kasperi Kapanen couldn’t get on the ice due to ineffective play. After playing sparingly against the Hurricanes, he was back on Thursday and scored the game-winning goal in a 4-3 Pens comeback win over Las Vegas.
“It’s been awhile since the last one,” Kapanen said. “I think a win in general, a big effort by the guys tonight.”
He’s right, his only other goal of the season came on opening night. The 26-year-old’s goal came two minutes after Jake Guentzel tied it with the first Pens power play goal since November 17. Kapanen kept the play alive keeping the puck in the zone and then made his way to the front of the net where he got a feed from Brock McGinn.
“We are thrilled for him that he got rewarded tonight on the score sheet,” said Pens Head Coach Mike Sullivan. “We are asking him to go to the net. He’s inside the dots and he’s at the net. We are obviously thrilled he got rewarded. He played a solid game, it wasn’t just the fact that he scored. His speed was noticeable and that’s what he’s capable of.”
“You see how hard he works,” said Pens goalie Tristan Jarry. “He’s out there first for every practice. He’s always trying to get better. It’s the little things like that he gets rewarded for working hard and not being discouraged and you see it tonight.”
“I feel like I had played some bad games and played some good games too, it just wasn’t going in,” Kapanen said. “Obviously, it always feels good to score in this league. Our line was playing well and we had a lot of chances. McGinn scored today too and Carter is always a huge presence for our line. Just a big effort from all of those guys.”
“He’s trying to play the game the right way,” Sullivan said. “He’s trying to leverage his speed as best he can. He was winning puck battles. I thought his wall play was pretty good. A lot of those things add up to winning hockey.”
It’s not that it hasn’t been tough for Kapanen to watch nine of the last 10 games before Tuesday.
“There isn’t a guy in the league that want to be healthy scratched,” Kapanen said. “I always want to compete with the guys and be battling out there. You want to work hard and just trying to do what I can to stay in the lineup.”
Other Pens Goals
McGinn worked hard to secure and then keep the puck behind the net early in the second period with the Pens trailing by a pair. He was able to skate out to the right side and finish from a tough angle to make it 2-1.
Later in the second, Sidney Crosby this time would work hard behind the net to steal a puck, immediately finds Guentzel in the slot and he feeds to Rickard Rakell for the finish and his 10th goal of the season, 2-2. Pens outshot Vegas 15-7 in the period, 47-37 for the game.
Jarring Jarry
Tristan Jarry saved 34 of those shots and often had a Golden Knight in his face.
“They have a lot of guys that can shoot the puck really well and that’s what they try to do,” Jarry said. “They try to get guys to the net and try and generate a lot of shots. I think just being able to be set and I thought the defense was doing a great job of boxing out and letting me see a lot of shots.”
“He made some big saves down the stretch,” Sullivan said. “I thought he was competing hard. He was fighting hard to find the puck. They’ve got some size on their team. They are a pretty good net-front team. We knew that was going to be one of our challenges, in particular it was a big challenge for Tristan because he’s got to be able to fight through the traffic to find the puck. I thought he did a really good job of that tonight.”
Kessel Honored
After the first TV timeout, the Pens played a video saluting the NHL Iron Man. Former two-time Penguin Stanley Cup champ Phil Kessel received a standing ovation and waved to the crowd saying ‘thank you’. Kessel has played in 1,007 consecutive games including Thursday night.
Lines
Jake Guentzel-Sidney Crosby-Rickard Rakell
Jason Zucker-Evgeni Malkin-Bryan Rust
Brock McGinn-Jeff Carter-Kasperi Kapanen
Ryan Poehling-Teddy Blueger-Josh Archibald
Brian Dumoulin-Jeff Petry
Marcus Pettersson-Jan Rutta
PO Joseph-Chad Ruhwedel
Up Next
Pens remain home against St. Louis Saturday at 7p. The Blues are currently sixth in the Central Division with both goalies averaging over three goals allowed per game.