The mumps may have set back the Pittsburgh Penguins, but it wasn’t able to stop them on Monday night. Without Sidney Crosby and Beau Bennett, both sidelined with the illness, and a handful of other players missing due to injuries, the Penguins merely turned to different sources of scoring to earn a 4-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning at Consol Energy Center.
The Penguins started out slowly, with the Lightning outshooting the Penguins by a 12-to-5 margin in the first period, and Penguins goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury had to make several key saves to keep the score tied.
“We were not very good at all in the first period, and that just they way it was,” said coach Mike Johnston, “they were on our heels, they had a lot of speed and we couldn’t handle the puck so you need a goaltender to be rock solid and Flower was great at that time and he gave us a chance to get back in the game.”
Brandon Sutter started the scoring off when he beat Victor Hedman at the point during a Lighting power play and fired a wrist shot past goaltender Ben Bishop for a shorthanded goal that gave the Penguins a 1-0 lead.
“Consistency is big and I thought even tonight we didn’t have a great start, but after that we settled down and got back to doing things the right way,” said Sutter.
On the same power play, the Lightning answered right back when Jonathan Drouin found a loose puck in the blue paint in front of Fleury and banged it in for a power-play goal.
Early in the second, Bryan Rust scored his first career NHL goal on a wrist shot, making the Pittsburgh lead 2-1.
“Its obviously something I’ve been looking forward too for a long time now and I was just happy to get into a game or two and I was just in the right place at the right time,” said Rust.
Just before the end of the period, Steve Downie scored a power-play goal on a rebound of a Patric Hornqvist shot to give the Penguins a 3-1 lead. Downie has been given more ice time and responsibility with the depletion of the Penguins roster, particularly at wing. He finished the game with a goal, an assist, two penalty minutes, six hits and had three blocked shots in 16:36 of ice time.
In the third period, Penguins defenseman Brian Dumoulin also scored his first NHL goal on a slapshot that deflected off a Lighting player’s skate and into the net.
“Right at the first moment it goes in, you have to double check to see if it went in and if it was actually your goal,” said Dumoulin, “I couldn’t believe that shot went in but I’ll take it.”
Tampa Bay added a second goal with just over three minutes remaining in the third period when Nikita Kucherov forced a Penguins turnover and was able to beat Fleury on a power move to the front of the net, but that Penguins were able to shut it down from there.
Fleury made a total of 28 saves and earned his seventh consecutive win. Evgeni Nabokov replaced Bishop in the Tampa Bay goal in the first intermission after the latter suffered a lower-body injury and was unable to return. Nabokov made 18 saves and was the goaltender of record.
An off day tomorrow should help the team’s injured and ill players to continue to rest and recover, and give rookies Rust and Dumoulin plenty of time to celebrate their first NHL goals.
