I've been hard on Matt Grzelcyk when warranted, but it's only fair to point out when he has a good night, too. Saturday brought one of those.

Grzelcyk was demoted to the third pairing alongside Ryan Graves and his 17:57 was the lowest ice time of any defenseman other than Graves. His impact was a positive one. His seven shot attempts tied for the second-most on the team behind Kris Letang's 11. While he's on one of the two power play units, his role at the point is to distribute the puck and generally doesn't attempt many shots himself. All seven of those attempt came at even strength. And one that didn't count toward those was this one on the power play in the first, which went through traffic and beat Joseph Woll thanks to Rickard Rakell's tip:

Graves told me that he thinks Grzelcyk playing on his off side on their pairing led to some of that offense he had throughout the night.

"You could see it offensively, I think he had maybe like four or five one-timers in the offensive zone," Graves said of Grzelcyk. "That's something that if that's a righty, it's just a D-to-D wrister. Whereas the one-timer is a lot heavier and hard to handle for goalies. So that aspect is a plus."

Though shot attempts tilted in Toronto's favor at five-on-five at 54-51, and shots on goal were a narrow 21-19 Penguins edge, things went well with Grzelcyk on the ice. In his 14:31 of five-on-five time, the Penguins controlled 54.05% (20-17) of shot attempts and 60% (6-4) of shots on goal. It was an effective third pairing, and probably one worth sticking with a little longer.