For the second time in three games this season, regulation time was not enough to settle things between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the New York Rangers. This time, it was the Rangers scoring in overtime and skating away with a 4-3 victory in Madison Square Garden on Monday night.
Rangers defenseman Kevin Klein scored the game-winning goal 3:45 into the extra period on a slapshot from the point through a screen and past Penguins goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury.
The Penguins came back from a 3-1 deficit late in the third to force the extra period. Evgeni Malkin slammed home a Brandon Sutter centering feed with 4:43 remaining in the third period.
24 seconds later, Steve Downie found a bouncing puck and slapped it past Henrik Lundqvist to tie the game.
“You look at the way the game went … I really liked our third period,” said Pens coach Mike Johnston. “It was a point in time in the game when we knew we had to do something and we were down by a goal, and then they scored and we still stayed with it.
“I compliment the guys, I thought it was great effort tonight, from start to finish we had to kill some really difficult penalties and I still thought we had definitely had a chance to win it.”
The Penguins earned the point despite missing six regulars, including defensemen Olli Maatta, who missed the game with an undisclosed injury, and Patric Hornqvist, who is still undergoing testing after taking a hard hit last week.
“When you are missing a lot of guys, you have to make up for that with your work ethic. I thought everybody worked hard tonight.” said Penguins captain Sidney Crosby.
After giving up two goals in the second period against Ottawa on Saturday, the Penguins again struggled in the middle frame.
Martin St. Louis pounced on a Paul Martin turnover and found Pittsburgh-area native J.T. Miller to tie the game at one with 16:10 left in the second period. 4:50 later, Brian Dumoulin misplayed a puck and Rick Nash came in on a breakaway. Fleury made the initial save but Nash stayed with the play and scored on his own rebound. Dumoulin finished with a minus-2 rating.
Rangers rookie forward Kevin Hayes added an insurance goal early in the third when he blocked Dumoulin’s shot just inside his own blueline and took it all the way to beat Fleury on the backhand and make the score 3-1.
Nick Spaling opened the scoring with a one-time that beat Lundqvist 7:25 into the first period. Crosby and Downie earned assists.
The Penguins were able to kill all four Rangers power plays, but were only able to generate one power play opportunity for themselves.
“We spent a lot of time on [the penalty kill] in the first and second period for sure, again we don’t want to spend that much time in the box, but I thought we did a good job,” said Sutter.
After facing the adversity of trailing by two late in the game and playing with a depleted lineup, coming away with one point may seem like a satisfactory result for the black and gold. That’s not the case for the Penguins’ captain.
“Good job by everyone to just to stick with it and get ourselves into overtime and get the point … but it’s never fun losing,” said Crosby.
