93.7 The Fan (PITTSBURGH) - Pittsburgh takes a 3-1 lead in the third period, but allow three unanswered to lose to Calgary 4-3.
Once again just like the game against the Kraken, the Penguins outshot their opponent, and by a good bit, but the end result was another loss.
"We just beat ourselves," said Mike Sullivan. "In a number of different ways, we had complete control of the game, played a really good game up until that point and we just made some egregious mistakes. It's hard to recover from that."
Pittsburgh outshot the Flames 14-3 in the first period and 10-7 in the second, but in the third period the Flames held Pittsburgh to just 6 shots on net. Jeff Carter scored early in the third period to give the Penguins a 3-1 lead and it looked like the way the Flames shot the puck in this game, that would be enough.
All of a sudden, halfway through the third period, Nazem Kadri scored a power play goal for the Flames to cut the Penguins lead 3-2. 32 seconds later, Blake Coleman tied the game on a one-timer in front of the net past Tristan Jarry.
Calgary took a penalty for goaltender interference as Coleman ran into Jarry, giving the Penguins a power play opportunity with 2:59 in the game. Sidney Crosby won the faceoff in the Flames zone, but Lars Eller hit MacKenzie Weegar in the face and was called for a high sticking penalty just 7 seconds into the power play.
With 50 seconds left in the game the power play expired and the Penguins had the puck in their own zone. Kris Letang had the puck stolen by Mikael Backlund who fed Yegor Sharangovich with a no look backhand pass and Sharangovich buried a wrist shot past Jarry to give Calgary the game winning goal.
The Penguins will have to turn the page immediately as they head to Edmonton for a 9 p.m. puck drop against the Oilers Sunday night.
"That's the world that we live in. We gotta keep fighting, we missed an opportunity tonight. I'm sure nobody feels good about it right now, none of us do. But we gotta find a way to get up tomorrow morning and re-energize, reinvest and get ready for the next one, especially this time of year, we're going to play a lot of hockey, we have a lot of games in front of us, we got a lot of opportunities and that's how we have to look at it," said Sullivan.