Penguins/Flyers Game 2 Recap: Pens shutout, fall behind 2-0 in series

Pregame

No lineup changes for the Penguins from Game 1, including going back to Stuart Skinner as the starting goalie.

The Flyers have one change from Game 1, Noah Juulsen is in and Emil Andrae is out on the blueline.

First period

Penalties are the story of the first period, the teams combine for eight minutes on four minors (three for Philadelphia, one for Pittsburgh) that ends up with the Penguins spending 4:00 of the period on the power play, where they don’t score and mostly don’t come close to doing so.

Other than that, the first period looked like Game 1 in many ways. The Flyers continue to gum things up in the neutral zone and play tight defense. The Penguins did better to cut through the defense at times — shot attempts were 19-5 PIT at one point — but still are unable to make much out of it just only getting two of those 19 attempts on goal. The Penguins are still butting their heads against the wall by attempting low-percentage cross-ice passes frequently. The Flyers are doing the typical Flyer things (Travis Sanheim dove forward and on his butt after feeling a stick in his skates to draw a penalty, Rasmus Ristolainen punched Sidney Crosby in the head after the whistle).

Shots for the period end up 5-2, PHI. Certainly not the style and way that Pittsburgh wants these games to go, it’s still right up the Flyers’ aisle. No goals through 20 minutes.

Second period

The Penguins get caught with six players on the ice 5:34 into the period. That happens before they can manage an official shot on goal in the period but they kill it off without much problems.

The game chugs along for a while, the Pens get some pressure and coming out of a TV timeout put Egor Chinakhov with Evgeni Malkin, Tommy Novak and the third pair defense. That group gets caught on the ice for a 1:30 shift and a bad bounce leads to the first goal. Ryan Shea blocks away a Travis Konecny shot but unfortunately the puck flips out right to Porter Martone. The rookie has a wide open net. 1-0 with 6:21 to play in the second.

A good shift by the fourth line draws a power play for Pittsburgh with 4:12 left in the period. It leads to disaster with a shorthanded goal against. Owen Tippett wants the puck way more than Tommy Novak, who compounds the mistake of an indirect path to the puck by then colliding with Kris Letang to hand the Flyers a late 2-on-1 down low. Tippett feeds Garnet Hathaway, who matches his regular season goal total of one in the playoffs with an easy finish to extend the PHI lead to 2-0.

Evgeni Malkin and a Flyer both get their sticks up and contact a Flyer up high, after review Malkin gets two minutes for the high-stick but avoids getting four minutes for not causing the injury.

End of the period and it wasn’t a good one. The Pens fall behind by two goals.

Third period

The Penguins kill off the carryover power play at the start of the period.

The newly reunited Rakell-Crosby-Rust line gets a very good shift, culminating in Sam Girard all alone from the middle getting a good shot that Dan Vladar answered with a big save.

Pittsburgh stacks a couple more good shifts with a second and third line playing well, followed up by Crosby getting a shot. Shots are 6-1 Pens and it’s the Flyers finally having to ice the puck to relieve pressure from the first sustained and decent push that Pittsburgh has made. Konecny hits Crosby once the puck is gone to open the door for yet another Penguin power play.

It starts out with near disaster, Bryan Rust can’t handle a zone entry pass and somehow the Flyers end up with a clean 2-on-0 break after Erik Karlsson misplays it. Skinner stands tall with by far his best save of the game to keep it from totally getting off the rails.

A little later, Ben Kindel gets a glorious chance but sails a puck well high of the goal.

Karlsson has to water ski on Tippett after the Flyer got behind the defense, the refs award Tippett the rare playoff penalty shot. It goes outside the far post and stays out, still a 2-0 game.

There isn’t a lot more sustained pressure for Pittsburgh, they pull Skinner but there’s no late-game magic to be found this time. Luke Glendening scores on the open net. 3-0 game with 2:05 to go.

Tempers flare in garbage time, Letang gets called for a penalty hitting a Flyer away from the puck. Anthony Mantha feeds Tippett a couple of uppercuts and gets tossed. Letang picks up an extra penalty along the way, ending up in a four minute Flyer power play with 1:47 to go.

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Some thoughts

The Pens’ power play went 7/18 vs PHI during the regular season, it’s at 0/7 for the playoffs with a SHG against tonight. That’s a big problem that’s actively hurting them. Situationally tonight there were some unfortunate circumstances (Erik Karlsson was stuck in the penalty box himself for a chunk of one power play) but there’s not much within the power plays to feel good about how it’s running at the moment.
Two shots in the first, the team’s lowest playoff output since 2000. Fast starts were such a key to the series, so far the Penguins haven’t been able to get out to anything at all. Another huge, huge issue.
The Flyers stick with starting the Sean Couturier checking line to open periods, today’s adjustment by Pittsburgh was to throw the Novak-Rakell-Malkin line out there to meet them. It’ll be interesting to see what happens at the start of periods now that the Pens have to make the first selection on the road in Games 3+4. A good bet: the Lizotte fourth line will start to see if Philadelphia will move accordingly to keep Couturier off the ice until a scoring line goes out for the Pens.
Another reason this game was way too much like Game 1 was the continued struggles of the Girard/Letang pair. Girard doesn’t look like he’s lost confidence but try as he may, he’s not having very many successful puck touches in all three zones. Letang’s struggles have continued.
Same could be said for Kindel too, he’s got no time or space to do anything and now might be clutching the stick a little too tightly. Subbing in Justin Brazeau isn’t alone going to fix all that ails the lineup right now, the players within it aren’t performing up to a playoff standard right now.
The Flyers’ teenager, on the other hand, is making a huge difference. Philadelphia had 23 shots on goal today, Martone had six of them and the only 5v5 goal.
The one good thing is the Flyers’ focus clearly being defensive-minded to layer their defense and often stack three near the blueline is that it’s difficult for them to generate a lot of sustained offense of their own. It’s a tight checking game that almost devolves into which team is going to get a good bounce or find some breakthrough that cracks the ice and forces the action to open up. Today the Flyers got that break out of nowhere (they hadn’t had a shot in 7:28 of game time before scoring).
It was good to see the lines get switched in the second period, Chinakhov and Crosby had nothing going on at all through a game and a half of these playoffs. The decision to put the Shea-Clifton pair out for an offensive-zone draw coming out of a TV timeout with a scoring line on the ice looked questionable and ended up coming back to bite the Penguins in that instance.
If you only knew that shot attempts were 75-38 PIT and at one point in the third period were 66-33, you’d be excused to think suggested good things on the scoreboard. That would end up being misleading, especially since the Pens only got 27 of those 75 shots on net and only a handful of them even had remote chances of being goals. The Pens got a bit of pressure at the start of the third period and required Vladar to look alive and make a couple of nice saves but just not nearly enough Grade A chances.

It’s back to the wall time now, the Penguins head on the road for Game 3 on Wednesday night and will need to come up with a lot better play than what they’ve showed so far.

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