SUNRISE, Fla. -- I doubt anyone expected the Penguins to sweep this season-opening road trip.
They opened the season against the defending Stanley Cup champions on their banner-raising night, followed by a game against the powerhouse Panthers, a team expected to contend for the Atlantic Division title.
With Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Mike Matheson and Zach Aston-Reese sidelined, and Jake Guentzel missing the first of the two games, just emerging from the trip unscathed any further probably would have made the trip a win.
For the Penguins to leave Florida with three of the possible four points in the standings is nothing short of an incredible showing, and it'd be hard to find much to complain about given the result.
And while the Penguins are viewing this road trip largely as a success, they're not entirely satisfied after letting that fourth point in the standings slip from their hands in Thursday's 5-4 overtime loss to the Panthers.
After falling into a 2-0 deficit in the first period, the Penguins turned that into a two-goal lead by midway point of the third period with goals from Danton Heinen, Jeff Carter, Guentzel and Evan Rodrigues.
Then, in a span that lasted less than two minutes, back-to-back goals from Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad forced overtime. After a failed breakaway attempt by Rodrigues, Carter Verhaeghe's shot that redirected off of the stick of Guentzel at the 1:37 mark of the extra frame completed the Panthers' rally:
"We got a two goal lead there in the third period," Mike Sullivan said. "I thought we had some scoring chances after that. When they got the third goal (Ekblad's first), I think we could have done a better job just trying to get the momentum back after that."
Looking at the game flow chart of the difference in shot attempts between the two teams, the momentum continued to briefly ride in the Penguins' favor after Rodrigues' goal put the Penguins up by two goals. The Panthers capitalized on a quick spike in momentum in their favor to tie the game. The Penguins pushed hard to regain the momentum near the end of the third, but it was too late to recover.
"The good is coming back," Rodrigues said of the Penguins' play. "We didn't lay down and die, we fought to the end. Obviously, the bad is letting those two goals in. I think when you have a two-goal lead, you try not to sit back and I think we did that a little bit."
"We got up 4-2 and felt like we had a lot of momentum there," Marcus Pettersson said. "We were competing. Then they got one goal, and we kind of sat back on our heels a little bit."
Pettersson thought that the Penguins just had a better showing -- not just because of the results -- in Tampa than they did in Sunrise. And it's easy to say that because of how close the two Florida teams are to each other in terms of both talent and style.
"I think they're quite similar teams," he said. "You see it when they play each other, too, it's tight because they play a similar style. They've got good offensive upside and like to stretch the ice."
While a clean sweep of the Florida trip would have been ideal, especially given how close the Penguins came to clinching that in this game, the Penguins are heading home feeling good after their play in these two games, even if the end result in this game fell short of the goal.
"Listen, I said to the guys after the game that we just we love their compete right now," Sullivan said. "We're competing hard, we're battling. It's not perfect by any stretch out there but I love our attitude, I love our compete. ... Unfortunately, we didn't get the two points. But I thought overall on this trip I thought our team competed really hard."
"Three out of four points against two really, really good teams," Rodrigues said. "You have to take the positive and and look forward to Saturday."
MORE FROM THE GAME
• Bryan Rust was injured from a hit by MacKenzie Weegar in the third period and was still being evaluated. Heinen was elevated to the top line in his absence.
• For the second time in as many games, Heinen got the Penguins on the board first in the game, scoring this second-period power play goal to cut the Panthers' lead at the time in half:
• Carter's game-tying goal on the power play later that period went in off of Ekblad's stick. It was the 400th goal of Carter's career:
He reflected on what the milestone meant after the game.
"I'll sit down and think about it," he said. "We got a long flight home. It means a lot. I've been lucky to play with a lot of good players and a lot of good teams and have been put in some really good situations to be able to produce. It means a lot to me, personally. Maybe down the road I'll think about it a little more, but I'm hoping to keep going and putting some more in here."
• Guentzel played in his first game of the season and scored this third-period goal from below the goal line, banking the shot off of Weegar:
"Jake was good," Sullivan said. "He looks like he didn't miss a beat out there. He's so opportunistic, the goal he got is a goal-scorer's goal from below the goal line. He might have learned that one from from 87. I's a goal-scorer's goal in my mind, that's a high-intellect play."
"It was great having him back," Carter said of Guentzel being back on his line. "You know, he brings a lot to this team. Offensively, defensively, he does it all. He's just a worker out there and it's nice to see him get on the board early. Hopefully, he can keep that going for us because we're going to need it."
• After scoring Tuesday in Tampa, Rodrigues extended his goal-scoring streak with this goal during a scrum in front of the Panthers' net:
"We had some sustained O-zone time and (Kasperi Kapanen) made a great play just inside the blue line," Rodrigues said of the play. "I saw that he had a ton of time and space so I kind of stopped looking at him and headed to the net and was fortunate to put that one in."
• Sullivan wasn't happy that the first of the Panthers' goals in the rally counted:
"I don't know how (the officials) kept sight of the puck," he said. "My question to them was, 'If you lose sight of the puck, you're supposed to blow the whistle.' They said they saw the puck. I don't know how they saw the puck. There were 10 people in the crease."
• DeSmith's game was his first non-preseason game since he was injured in May. He made 34 saves on 39 shots, with four of the five goals allowed being high-danger shots. He only stopped five of the nine high-danger shots he faced.
"I thought he was solid," Sullivan said. "I thought he made some big saves. You know, there was a lot of traffic, it seemed like that was the case at both ends of the rink. I thought both goaltenders played really well."
• Rodrigues said that in the Penguins' pre-scout meetings on Florida, going five-hole on Sergei Bobrovsky was a point of emphasis. Rodrigues tried to do that on a breakaway opportunity and was denied.
"I think there was three or four of us today that all tried it," Rodrigues said. "Clearly, it's something he worked on over the summer. Because clearly, clearly, it didn't work for any of us."
• The Penguins registered 47 shots on goal, and three individual Penguins had exceptionally impressive shot totals in this game. Guentzel had nine shots, Carter had eight and Rodrigues had seven. Nobody else had more than four. Carter attempted an absurd 14 shots, and Guentzel attempted 10. Rodrigues attempted seven, so every one of his attempts registered as a shot on goal.
• Kris Letang had seven hits. The Penguins had 22 hits as a team, so Letang had nearly a third.
• With four assists, Letang is the Penguins' points leader through two games.
• Rodrigues and Heinen are neck-and-neck for the goal-scoring lead, with two apiece.
• For all Sullivan said about how they expected Patric Hornqvist to be a "pain in the neck" in this game, I barely noticed Hornqvist on the ice. He only played 9:22 all game (third-lowest among Panthers forwards) and 6:40 at five-on-five (second-lowest among Panthers forwards). His 36.84 Corsi For percentage was the second-worst among Panthers forwards at five-on-five.
• Former Panther Mike Matheson is still a popular guy around here. It took him forever to get out of the building, because he stopped to speak with so many arena workers who seemed thrilled to see him again. Good guy.
• The Jets, Kraken, Lightning and Bruins were among the teams with scouts in the building. Tampa's scout was former Penguins defenseman (2002-03) Jamie Pushor.
• The Panthers have a framed photo of Jaromir Jagr in the press box, holding his puck from career point No. 1,888, the one that pushed him past Mark Messier for No. 2 all-time in NHL history.
• I saw a lot of Panthers Jagr jerseys in the crowd, maybe just as many as any current player. I also saw a Penguins fan in a Nick Bjugstad jersey, which didn't end up being the best investment.
• Panthers fans yell two things during the anthem -- "red," which is weird hearing in any building other than that of the Capitals, and "night," which is presumably for goaltender Spencer Knight.
• The Panthers have two mascots -- Stanley C. Panther, and Viktor E. Rat, the latter inspired by Panthers captain Scott Mellanby killing a rat in the locker room in the 1995-96 season, the year in which the Panthers went to the Cup Final. I just want to know why only one of the two mascots wears pants:
GETTY
• It's too bad that this Panthers team can't get a sold-out arena. The lower bowl looked to be nearly full. I know it doesn't look like that on TV, but that's because the section behind the benches is the club section, and a lot of those fans hang out in the club in parts of the game. (I walked through the club during Wednesday's practice and it's unreal nice, so I don't blame them.) But the upper bowl looked to only be about two-thirds full, maybe less. There were a lot of wide-open sections. It doesn't help that the arena is in Sunrise, nowhere near anything of consequence.
• Kind of weird not seeing an arena sponsor on the ice surface. The arena was most recently named the BB&T Center, named after a bank that no longer exists. It's now named FLA Live Arena while they look for a real naming-rights partner.
• Because I know people enjoy the player suit rankings, I'll say Kapanen's tan suit won today. Very Florida.
THE ESSENTIALS
THE THREE STARS
As selected at FLA Live Arena:
1. Aaron Ekblad, Panthers
2. Carter Verhaeghe, Panthers
3. Jeff Carter, Penguins
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE INJURIES
• Sidney Crosby expects to miss "hopefully a week or two" more after recovering from offseason wrist surgery. He's resumed practicing with the team and skated on Thursday.
• Evgeni Malkin is expected to miss the first two months of the season while recovering from his knee surgery.
• Zach Aston-Reese was diagnosed with COVID-19 during training camp, has been medically cleared and is practicing with the team. He skated on Thursday morning and got into some "battle" situations, something Sullivan said they wanted him to experience before getting into a game.
• Mike Matheson is day-to-day with a lower-body issue. He is on the road trip and participated in Tuesday's morning skate, leaving halfway through. He skated on Thursday morning.
• Bryan Rust left Thursday's game with an undisclosed injury and is still being evaluated.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Jake Guentzel - Jeff Carter - Bryan Rust
Jason Zucker - Evan Rodrigues - Kasperi Kapanen
Brock McGinn - Teddy Blueger - Danton Heinen
Dominik Simon - Brian Boyle - Sam Lafferty
Brian Dumoulin - Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson - John Marino
Mark Friedman - Chad Ruhwedel
And for Joel Quenneville's Panthers:
Carter Verhaeghe - Aleksander Barkov - Sam Reinhart
Jonathan Huberdeau - Sam Bennett - Owen Tippett
Frank Vatrano - Anton Lundell - Patric Hornqvist
Ryan Lomberg - Joe Thornton - Anthony Duclair
MacKenzie Weegar - Aaron Ekblad
Gustav Forsling - Radko Gudas
Matt Kiersted - Brandon Montour
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins were originally scheduled to practice in Cranberry, but cancelled that after the game. Dave Molinari and I will both cover the home opener Saturday evening against the Blackhawks at PPG Paints Arena.
THE CONTENT
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