Zach Aston-Reese celebrates the goal that tied the game, 6-6, Wednesday night. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

Penguins

Letang 'knew we had a chance to come back' ☕

Nov 28, 2019 • 2:31 pm

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Regulation had percolated down to its final 14 minutes.

Vancouver had seized a 6-3 lead, and the Penguins already had used two goalies -- perhaps surprisingly, never at the same time -- with varying degrees of failure.

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable time for them to smash some sticks, mutter a few socially unacceptable oaths and slip into a fetal position in the corner of the rink until the third period expired.

"It's 6-3," Canucks coach Travis Green said. "And I know our team was feeling pretty good about ourselves."

Understandably so, but his players got over that pretty quickly after the Penguins ran off the final five goals of the game to salvage an improbable 8-6 victory at PPG Paints Arena Wednesday night.

"This could have been one of our best wins of the year," Green said. "And it turns into a loss that hurts, that really stinks."

For Vancouver, anyway. For the Penguins, it was the latest evidence of their unflinching response to adversity.

"We love our resilience that this group shows," Mike Sullivan said. "It's just a never-say-die attitude. Regardless what the score is or what the challenge is in front of us, we just go out and play."

Mind you, at times during this game the Penguins didn't do that particularly well, as they created much of that adversity they eventually overcame.

There was subpar goaltending by Matt Murray, who was replaced by Tristan Jarry with 58.5 seconds left in the second period after he allowed four goals on 14 shots. There also were stretches when the Penguins' decision-making was suspect, their execution sloppy and their attention to detail pretty much missing.

Still, the Penguins were convinced that numbers on the scoreboard were not an accurate reflection of how the game had been playing out.

"It was a bit frustrating," Zach Aston-Reese said. "We thought we were playing well, then it would just seem like we'd have one small lapse and it would end up in our net."

You'd think that after it happened a half-dozen times, they might have caught onto the trend and gotten a bit discouraged. That doesn't seem to be how this group is hard-wired, though.

"We were kind of dominating the play most of the night, so guys kept playing hard," Kris Letang said. "They knew we had a chance to come back."

Letang, who'd been having the kind of game that could keep him out -- way out -- of the Norris Trophy conversation this season if he replicates it with any regularity, earned a huge measure of redemption at 16:54 of the third, when he beat goalie Thatcher Demko with a slap shot from inside the right circle for what proved to be the game-winning goal.

It inspired a seismic celebration by the crowd of 18,465, and Letang was pretty happy about it, too.

Once he realized it his shot had gone in, anyway.

"I was shooting next to a guy, so I couldn't see behind him," Letang said. "I just kind of reacted with the crowd."

Perhaps he recognized that sound because he'd already heard it so many times over the course of the evening. And while the decibel count peaked when Letang scored, it also had spiked about 6 1/2 minutes earlier, when Aston-Reese threw a rebound past Demko to pull the Penguins even, 6-6.

He scored just seconds after Demko, a nemesis from their days in Hockey East, had rejected his shot from close range.

"I couldn't believe he got his leg over (on that save)," Aston-Reese said. "So to get that other chance, my eyes lit up and I just tried to get it off my stick as quick as possible."

Turned out to be a pretty good plan.

Demko actually had been scheduled to have the night off -- Green told reporters after the game-day skate that Jacob Markstrom would get the start -- but Green explained after the game that he'd turned to Demko because "something happened in the morning, and (Markstrom) just didn't feel like he was well enough to play."

By the end of the evening, after he had given up seven goals on 39 shots, Demko likely knew exactly how Markstrom felt.

Bad as Demko's night ended up being, Murray's was worse. After being little more than an interested observer for most of the first period, when Vancouver generated just three shots, he was beaten by Jake Virtanen and Adam Gaudette 41 seconds apart as the second was winding down to give Vancouver a 4-2 lead.

"When they got the two quick goals at the end of the second period, I just felt like (yanking him) might be the right thing for him and for our team," Sullivan said.

The move didn't pay off immediately, as J.T. Miller and Gaudette scored on Jarry during a 37-second span early in the third, but Dominik Kahun triggered the Penguins' game-deciding surge with a goal at 6:16.

Evgeni Malkin added an exclamation point to the comeback with an empty-netter with .2 seconds to go in the third period. That gave him two goals and three assists on the night, his first five-point game since March 20, 2012.

"We need him to play the same way he did tonight," Letang said. "It's a good example for all the guys in the room."

So was finding a way to win another game that seemed almost hopelessly out of their reach.

• This is the first time the Penguins have scored six third-period goals in a victory since Dec. 26, 1991. That was seven months and a day after they won the franchise's first Stanley Cup. A few things have happened since then.

• Jarry, on the Penguins' battle back from their three-goal deficit: "It's fun to watch, but it's tough to be a part of as a goalie."

• Miller, the Canucks winger who was born in East Palestine, Ohio and later moved to Coraopolis, scored two goals, giving him 26 points in his first 26 games in Vancouver.

• The Penguins are 6-0-2 in their past eight home games, 8-2-4 in their past 14 overall.

• Vancouver's Elias Petterson had a goal and an assist to become one of five active players to reach the 30-point mark in fewer than 30 games in each of his first two NHL seasons. The others are Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Connor McDavid and Malkin.

• Guentzel has eight goals and five assists in seven career games against the Canucks. There's no word on whether he's going to lobby to get the Penguins moved into the Western Conference.

• Quinn Hughes recorded three assists, making him the first defenseman in Canucks history to have three three-assist games as a rookie. He did it in just 25 games.

THE ESSENTIALS

• Boxscore

• Video highlights

• NHL scoreboard

• NHL standings

THE INJURIES

• Nick Bjugstad (core muscle surgery)

• Sidney Crosby (sports hernia surgery)

• Justin Schultz (unspecified lower-body)

THE LINEUPS

Sullivan’s lines and pairings:

Jake Guentzel -- Evgeni Malkin -- Bryan Rust