Penguins rally twice with 'no-quit attitude' to beat Canucks in OT

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Erik Karlsson said that the Penguins "didn't play our best game" in their 4-3 overtime win over the Canucks here in Vancouver, British Columbia on Tuesday night.

I mean ... sure. The Penguins have definitely had more complete wins, shutting out or blowing out lesser opponents. But this? This win capped off by Karlsson's overtime winner, against the top team in the league, now without both Jake Guentzel and Bryan Rust, and having to come back from a deficit not once, but twice? 

It wasn't their best game, but it was as convincing as a win as ever that somewhere within them, the Penguins can manage to do what it takes to compete with the league's top teams. And with Kyle Dubas in attendance, still looking for evidence that this team doesn't deserve to be sellers at the March 8 trade deadline, that can go a long way.

"I'm real proud of them," Mike Sullivan would say of his group after. "I just thought we we had a certain resilience about us all night long. We get down a couple of goals, we just stay with it, just kept competing. I think we're capable of coming back in games, and tonight was evidence against a really good team."

The Penguins had a slow start, trailing 2-0 through 20 minutes after goals from Vancouver's Nils Hoglander and Brock Boeser, the latter on the power play. It had the making of another one of those nights, where the Penguins aren't in the game from the start and can never quite recover. And with the Penguins entering this game with a 5-9-4 record when trailing after the first period, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect that the Penguins were already in a hole they couldn't get out of,

Rickard Rakell got the rally started early in the second period, beating Thatcher Demko with this drag around Tyler Myers set up by Sidney Crosby:

"I was expecting to get a one-timer first," Rakell explained. "But then it was a little bit behind me. Then I just tried to pull it through, and I was surprised to see it go in."

Then Rakell evened the score on a five-on-three power play off of another Crosby assist:

"(Jeff Carter) did a great job of picking the guy in front," Rakell said of that one. "It was a great pass from Sid, I had a wide-open net."

The Penguins held onto that tie for all of 29 seconds before a J.T. Miller shorthanded goal put the Canucks up 3-2 midway through the middle frame.

But midway through the third period, it was Lars Eller who again tied the game and ultimately forced overtime:

"It was just one of those where we kept the possession," Eller told me of his goal. "I came off the bench just as the late guy and I think it was hard and a little bit confusing for (the Canucks). I just saw I had a lot of time and space, and I saw that the blocker side was pretty open. There was a good screen in front."

It was Eller who put the puck behind Demko. But rewind the tape back further, and you see that the goal was the result first and foremost of a strong shift by the second line, especially the young guys on Evgeni Malkin's wing. Drew O'Connor and Valtteri Puustinen chased down a loose puck in the Vancouver end and teamed up to win a board battle. The ensuing possession led to good offensive zone time and a couple of chances before Eller got the one that counted.

"I thought they were terrific," Sullivan said of O'Connor and Puustinen. "I think they've worked really well with Geno. I think that line had a lot of opportunities, a lot of O zone time. And I think OC and Puusty are a big part of it. They hunt pucks, they're quick to pucks, they're on top of pucks."

Tristan Jarry stopped 32 of 35 shots faced, including nine of 10 high-danger shots on goal the Canucks threw his way. He made a pair of exceptional stops late in regulation, carrying the Penguins to overtime and setting the stage for Karlsson to do this:

"We got a good bounce on a blocked shot," Karlsson said. "Reilly (Smith) made a good read when I kept it in the zone. We just caught him flat-footed and it came up to me in a good spot and we won the game."

Again, not a perfect game. But to erase two Canucks leads -- one that was the result of a pretty crushing shorthanded goal -- was pretty encouraging.

"It's determination and guts," Eller said of the win. "When we were down and things aren't looking good, there's a no-quit attitude. We find a way to claw back in. A huge two points."

The Penguins' injury situation can't be understated, either. The Guentzel-Crosby-Rust line was the most productive line at five-on-five in the entire league early in the season. It was carrying the Penguins through stretches. This was the first game all season in which both Guentzel and Rust were out of the lineup, as Guentzel remains sidelined until at least March 10 with his upper-body injury and Rust is now considered "week-to-week" with his own upper-body injury. 

If the depleted Penguins can put forth a showing like this against the league's top team, what's stopping them from weathering this injury storm and coming out of it still in the playoff hunt?

And if they can do that, how can Dubas justify being sellers at this trade deadline?

GETTY

THE ESSENTIALS

• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule

THE HIGHLIGHTS

THE THREE STARS

As selected at Rogers Arena:

1. Rickard Rakell, Penguins RW
2. J.T. Miller, Canucks, C
3. Sidney Crosby, Penguins C

THE IN-GAME INJURIES

• Penguins: Drew O'Connor got hit hard in the corner with under two minutes to play. Hard to say if he was actually injured, given that he likely wouldn't have seen the ice in overtime regardless.

• Canucks: None

THE LINEUPS

Sullivan’s lines and pairings:

Reilly Smith - Sidney Crosby - Rickard Rakell
Drew O'Connor - Evgeni Malkin - Valtteri Puustinen
Emil Bemstrom - Lars Eller - Jesse Puljujarvi
Jansen Harkins - Noel Acciari - Jeff Carter

P.O Joseph - Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson - Erik Karlsson
Ryan Graves - Chad Ruhwedel

And for Rick Tocchet's Canucks:

Pius Suter - J.T. Miller - Brock Boeser
Nils Hoglander - Elias Pettersson - Ilya Mikheyev
Arshdeep Bains - Elias Lindholm - Conor Garland
Phillip Di Guiseppe - Teddy Blueger - Sam Lafferty

Quinn Hughes - Filip Hronek
Ian Cole - Tyler Myers
Nikita Zadorov - Noah Juulsen 

THE SCHEDULE

The Penguins were originally scheduled to stay the night in Vancouver and practice here on Wednesday, but they scrapped that plan after the win and Wednesday will now be an off day. Next game is Thursday in Seattle at 10:08 p.m. Eastern. They'll have a morning skate on Thursday first, potentially now a full one because of the day off on Wednesday.

THE FEED

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