Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Sidney Crosby leads Penguins to a streak-snapping Halloween victory!
Episode Date: November 1, 2024Sidney Crosby appears to have woken up from his slumber and pulled the Penguins to a big OT win over the Ducks! Patrick and Hunter talk about the Penguins' 2-1 win over the Anaheim Ducks in overtime t...o break their six-game losing streak. They break down the win, what the Penguins did right, and how they were able to overcome a first-period deficit. Then, they discuss how Sidney Crosby appears to be all the way back after a couple of quiet weeks and how there are some signs that Erik Karlsson appears to be figuring it out. Finally, they get you ready for a Saturday night matchup with the Montreal Canadiens. Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!PrizePicksDownload the app or go to https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/LOCKEDONNHL to get $50 instantly after you play your first $5 lineup. GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNHL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.FanDuelYou can start the season with a big return on FanDuel. New customers can place aFIVE DOLLAR bet and you’ll get started with ONEHUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS - if you win your first FIVE DOLLAR BET!Visit FANDUEL.COM to get started. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
On Thursday night, Sidney Crosby broke out his Nintendo and played himself a little bit of duck hunt.
Hunter and I are going to talk about the penguins getting back into the wind column and more on this edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast.
Your Locked-on Penguin, your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day.
And welcome back to another edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I'm one of your host,
Patrick Damp. You can follow me on Twitter at Synonym 4Wet.
Joined as always by my co-host, the one and only Hunter Hodes.
You can follow him on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. You can give our show's account a follow at
LO underscore Penguins. And of course, we appreciate you making this part of your daily routine
because we're your team every day. And don't forget that we are free and available
wherever you get your podcast as well as YouTube. And if you are following us on YouTube,
make sure to hit that notification button so you can get the alert when we drop our daily Monday through Friday episodes.
And before we jump into today's episode, this episode is brought to you by Fandall.
You can start the season with a big return on Fandall and new customers can place a $5 bet and they'll get started with $150 in bonus bets if they win their first $5 bet.
Visit Fandle.com to get started.
The Pittsburgh Penguins Hunter are out of their losing streak.
They snap their six-game losing streak with a two-to-one overtime victory over the Anaheim Ducks.
More accurately, I should probably say, Sidney Crosby to Anaheim one.
Sidney Crosby with a great effort, which we will talk more about in our second segment of this episode.
But quick rundown of the game, the Penguins.
absolutely dominate the Anaheim ducks in the first period, putting up 18 shots to Anaheim's
only seven. The penguins seem to have a possession of the puck for pretty much the entire
first period, but they are unable to come out of that with a tie or even a lead as one single
defensive breakdown leads to a goal against. And everybody thought, well, here we go again. Then
there was a sleepy second period. Not a whole lot.
to report from that. The ducks got some pushback. The penguins added 11 of their own shots.
And then less than two minutes into the third period. Sidney Crosby gets the penguins on the board with a
great deflection after it looked like the Anaheim goaltender Lucas Dostel was going to steal this one
from the penguins. But Crosby gets that goal. Penguins keep pouring on the pressure for most of the
third. Then the last five minutes was basically pawned hockey. And it was,
was fun to watch. Alex Nadelcovic with a couple of saves. He keeps the game at an even one to one.
Then we go to overtime and Sidney Crosby with some absolute magic. Deeks do stow out of his
pads, ends the game, and the penguins get their first win in their last seven games. So Hunter,
on to you. Break this game down for us and give us your thoughts on the penguin's first victory
in quite some time. Yeah, at least for me, Pat, this was a dominant.
win by the Penguins.
And you could tell that they had a little bit of their swagger back after the first
couple of shifts.
They were skating circles around the ducks in the offensive zone.
Againy Malkin was going all around the world.
So many times throughout this game and the Ducks, they really had no answer for the
Penguins' offensive attack.
I mean, if you want to just look at the raw shot totals at the end of this game,
it was two to one.
Penguins out shot the Ducks, 46 to 23.
The only reason why this game was close was because of the play of Ducks' Coltender,
Lucas Dostar.
and he should be the Ducks number one goaltender moving forward for quite a long time.
I think they have found their guy in him,
and I feel like it's only a matter of time before they move on from John Gibson
just because Dostle, he's a bit younger.
And we warned everyone during the show on Thursday,
this kid was awesome against the Penguins last year in one of the games,
and he's had a great start to the year.
He came into this game with a 9-43 save percentage,
and you saw why.
He was stowling the Penguins throughout,
and it took a Herculean effort from Cindy Crosby to beat him in overtime.
But I really liked a lot of what the Penguins did in this game, even defensively.
There were a couple of scary moments in the final five minutes of the third period
that definitely made me almost cover my face.
And obviously, you have the one in the first period where it's like,
oh, my God, potentially here we go again,
because the one mistake they make ends up in the back of their net.
But I really like what Marcus Pedersen said after the game when it came to that chance
and just overall.
He said, whenever a team scores, we kind of unravel after that.
I think it could have happened to us tonight.
We dominate the first period and they get a goal.
But I think we kind of just stuck with it and said, enough is enough.
And it's like, yes, Pedersen, I want that mentality going forward for the rest of this season.
When something bad happens, you're like, okay, you move on.
You don't wilt off of it.
And that's what the Penguins didn't do in that game.
They didn't wilt and give up another goal or two or three or four or whatever.
They stuck to their game and they were eventually rewarded with a tying goal.
from Crosby in the third period and the overtime winner in overtime.
And I know we'll get to Crosby a bit more in the second segment,
but I want to say now he is fully back, people.
Yes, he was in a bit of a rut to open the season.
He wasn't playing that well.
We said on the show that we hadn't seen him look this disinterested in probably nine years,
but he's factored in on all the five Penguins' last goals,
five points in his last two games.
He is all the way back.
and we knew it was going to happen, but I am so happy.
That was vintage stuff from him and overtime.
Really nice win overall, even though I feel like we might have found a team that's
worse defensively than the penguins.
And that's saying a lot because the penguins have been awful defensively this year.
Yeah.
And I will say this about the Alex Colorn goal that the ducks got in the first period.
Elite pass from Trevor Zegras.
Like we talked about yesterday, that kid still has all the skill and potential in the world.
and it was a perfect pass.
And it was definitely a defensive breakdown by the penguins for sure.
We can't run from that.
We can't lie about that and say that, oh, no, it was just a great play.
But you do have to give credit when it's due.
He made an unbelievable pass for Alex Colorn to finish off.
But it should not have got to that point with the way the penguins essentially backchecked
on that goal and didn't get to the right spots or at the very least.
didn't get there quickly enough to break that option and keep it from happening.
But at the same time, you have to give credit to the great players when they make great
plays. And to the point about the ducks, we're going to sit here and fawn over a great
performance from do stil, but you can tell why they have maybe aside from just being young,
why they're not great defensively, they know they've got that goalie back there.
You can take a little bit of a risk.
you can be a little bit sloppy when you have a goalie who on a night like last night
faces 46 shots and makes 44 saves comes out with a loss despite having a 9.56 save
percentage.
So that's a huge night for him.
One other thing I want to add about last night's game and I was there and I've seen
the discourse on this today, it was not a packed house whatsoever.
There were a lot of empty seats.
And I know this is changed over the past few years, especially since the Stanley Cup runs.
But you could tell that everybody in attendance was a big fan, or at the very least, follows this team closely.
Because it may not have been a large crowd, but it was an engaged crowd.
Everything garnered a reaction, whether it was positive or negative, whether it was the penguins getting chances and not finishing them.
people were locked into watching that when they had their second power play of the night that
was absolutely disastrous.
This crowd let them hear it.
And just every time this team needed a boost, the crowd was there to give it.
I mean, there were chants all night long just.
And it wasn't just iceberg hitting the drum or hitting the air horn.
It was just people starting to chant, let's go pens.
Ned made a couple saves late.
And this crowd was all in on giving them his props.
So yeah, it's definitely a problem for the business side that they're not getting big crowds.
But the people that were there, they were all in, man.
It was a fun crowd.
And part of that is Halloween because people were there in costume and it was a party like atmosphere.
But it was a very fun crowd, despite it not being a large one.
And lastly, you factor in everything else.
They have not won a playoff series since 2018.
They have not been in the playoffs for the last two years.
years. They were in the midst of a six-game losing streak, and it was a Thursday night Halloween.
Very difficult to make that a must-see event in those circumstances. But good to see that the
penguins were able to break their losing streak, get back in the win column. And Hunter and I are
going to talk more about the game, some other great individual efforts, especially the guy who
won the game in overtime, Captain Sidney Crosby. But we will do that when we come back,
But first, we have to tell you about our first sponsor, and that is game time.
You guys know it.
It's the absolute best time of the sports calendar.
We're into the NHL season.
The NBA is back.
College football is back.
NFL's in full swing.
And there is absolutely no substitute than going to these games in person.
So if you're looking to get tickets to those events, game time is your place to be.
And GameTime has a new feature called Game Time Picks that makes getting tickets for your favorite live events even easier.
Game Time Picks filters out the fluff to show you only incredible deals on great seats,
so you don't have to waste time searching through thousands of tickets.
It's my favorite story.
When I was in high school, a couple of friends and myself tried to go to a Penguins game at the old Mellon Arena.
We bought tickets off of a scalper, but they were for a section and a row that did not exist.
and it would sure have been nice if we could have had game time to help us get tickets to that game.
So game time picks, one of their many features you can customize and it makes it easier to save more on sports,
concerts, comedy theater, and whatever else you'd like to see.
There's also all in pricing.
When you toggle that feature on, it shows you the total up front.
So you're not getting hit with any of those surprise, annoying fees at checkout.
You can also get a view of your seat in the app before you buy and that full panoramic view
will get you an idea of what your seats are going to look like once you enter the venue.
And there's GameTime's lowest price guarantee.
They will credit you 110% of the difference if you find a better deal somewhere else.
And your purchase is covered with the most flexible customer service policy in the ticketing industry.
So take the guesswork out of buying tickets with GameTime,
download the GameTime app, create an account, and use code locked on NHL for $20 off your first purchase.
Terms apply, create an account and redeem code L-O-C-O-N-N-H-L for $20 off.
Download game time today.
What time is it?
It's game time.
All right, welcome back to the Friday edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast.
I'm Patrick Damp alongside the one and only Hunter Hodes as always.
And big night for Captain Sidney Crosby, not just because he scores the overtime winner,
but because he put up a great effort.
and in the last two games, as you alluded to, in the first segment,
he has scored five points factored in on every goal the team has scored over the past two
games and just overall watching his game.
This is the Sydney Crosby we are used to seeing.
He's owning the puck.
He is great down low.
He's making passes you expect him to make.
And he's playing a borderline physical game.
It's really heartening to see that since he's been put with a visual,
Genie Malkin and Ricard Raquel, it appears to have been the spark that he needs to get his
game back on track.
Right.
Again, I was definitely a little bit skeptical about that just because I usually don't like
Malkin playing on the wing.
I like the two great centers of it separated so they can carry their own lines.
But I have really liked that line with Raquel on it these last two games.
And the underlying numbers support what you saw last night.
I mean, that line was owning the ducks all game long.
66% of the shot attempts for the penguins at 5 on 5 when the Malk and Crosby-Reckel line was on the ice.
They also had 17 scoring chances for, eight scoring chances against, eight high-danger chances
for four high-danger chances against.
They took the Ducks lunch money yesterday, and it was the same thing against the wild as well.
The underlying numbers were really good for that line against Minnesota, which is a much better
defensive team.
But still, the process has been there these last two games, and you're going to continue
you seeing them, I think, use this line until it fizzles out or something like that,
or maybe they feel more confident in Crosby's game to take Malkin off and put him on his own
line again. But it has been nice seeing that line cook it even strength these last two games. And
you said it. Cindy Crosby is all the way back. He's factored in on all of the Penguins' last
five goals. And again, this is why I kept telling people, he's 37 now. Sometimes it takes a bit
longer for a player like him to come out of a rut and to start playing a bit better.
We all knew it was going to have it eventually.
He's not going to have just a terrible season unless, you know, we really see him bottom
out, which again, I'll believe that when I see it when it comes to Sidney Crosby
with how he's played throughout his career.
He was never washed or anything like that.
If anyone said that Crosby was washed, just ignore them, block their number.
That was never the case.
All we said on this show is that we want him to play better because he wasn't playing that
well to start the season. But he is all the way back now. And that was vintage Sydney Crosby in overtime.
Great play, by the way, by Cody Glass to get the puck from Cutter-Gocier. He gets the turnover.
Crosby gets it. And then the way that he was able to settle it down, come to a complete stop in front
of Dostal, and make him look silly. I mean, that was beautiful, man. I know this team is not that good this
year. But I had the biggest smile on my face after that goal because goals like that.
That will never get old.
And it was a fantastic moment yet again.
And also, we should say, Penguins have played three times in three-on-three overtime this year.
Only one of them has gone to shit out.
The other two, penguins are two-no to start overtime.
I've noticed at least one tweak that they've made,
and they're being more diligent with the puck on their stake.
They're not making stupid changes as well.
For last season, for example, they would make so many dumb changes in overtime
that would lead to a goal against.
odd-end rush against, et cetera.
This season, they're not doing that.
So as much as we have crushed this coaching staff on the show, and rightfully so,
I will say one thing they've gotten right, at least so far this season, 12 games in,
this can obviously change.
But so far, this coaching staff has gotten this team playing a lot more better in three-on-three
overtime this year compared to last year.
But again, great moment from Sidney Crosby.
And I only know that this is going to keep happening.
He's also back to a point per game, by the way, 12.
in 12 games. He is. He's right back on his point per game pace, which we know he's chasing that
record. If he records a point per game, this season, he will have sole possession of first
place over Wayne Gretzky for the most consecutive point per game seasons in National Hockey League
history. To your point about the coaching staff as well as overtime, this relates to both
overtime and Sidney Crosby. Mike Sullivan had quite a lot to say after the game. He was
asked about Sidney Crosby kind of being in a funk to start the year. And he had some very
interesting things to say about that, basically saying that when it comes to Sidney Crosby,
he's one of the greatest of all time. And he has an ability that so many others and so few
have that you expect him to work his way out of it. But Sullivan kind of brought us into the mind of
Sidney Crosby saying we try to help him for a guy who is one of the greatest of all time.
He does still want to be coached.
He wants feedback.
He wants to watch film.
He wants help.
But we try to pick our spots.
We try to watch video with him, share our insights, give him an opportunity to watch
along with us and walk us through it.
And he is such a determined player that when he goes through the ebbs and flows of the season,
like all players do, he has an uncanny ability to will himself out of it.
and tonight was an example of his ability to take his game to another level.
So you understand that Crosby has this inherent ability to just be one of the greatest players.
He sees things other people don't.
But I think one of the things that takes him even further is that he uses the resources around him.
He's not going to be stubborn.
He's not going to say, no, get out of my face.
I got this.
He's going to use the resources around him to find ways to get better.
and that includes the coaching staff.
Along with that,
Sullivan also said that that was a huge focus of this offseason.
They knew that they were not a good overtime team.
And he basically said that, yeah,
the focus over the off season was to get this team better in overtime.
And you can see, like you said,
they're not making slapdash changes.
They're not making dumb decisions with the puck.
and you can see that everything they do in overtime,
and this showed through last night,
that it was a deliberate effort with the puck every time they had it.
Guys would not go for changes unless they had 100% possession,
and it didn't look like a 50-50 puck.
Guys were sticking to a man in the defensive zone any time that the ducks,
the little bit of time the ducks had possession,
every player was picking up a man and sticking with them.
Even if he went across the entire defensive zone,
They picked a man and stuck with him.
There was no changes.
There was no transitioning.
It was just find a man, stay with him, and do not let him get open.
And that ends up paying off in Sydney Crosby's overtime winner.
Last thing, and I know you want to cook on this, so I'll say something real quick and let you go.
I thought it was a very strong game from Eric Carlson last night.
A lot of puck possession, a lot of good passes, missed the net quite a few times.
but I said this to you before we hit record.
Yeah, there were some turnovers.
Yeah, there were some questionable decisions.
But when you are a player of Eric Carlson's caliber,
you want the puck on his stick.
And this is not a blind defense of him.
I'm not saying like Crosby that he's all the way back.
Everybody can stop worrying.
He still has a mountain to climb before we can start truly singing his praises.
But this was a very good step in the right direction.
And I thought he had a very strong game.
game last night. Yeah, outside, I think of a couple of miscues in the final five minutes of
regulation where he made a couple of, I guess you can call them boneheaded mistakes. I felt like
those first 55-ish minutes were really good from Eric Carlson. And you look at hockey stats cards,
he led the penguins in average game score last night. He was awesome in the offensive zone.
He was involved all game long. And even before those couple of mistakes to end regulation,
thank God for Ndilkevich and Pedersen, by the way,
right around the gold mouth.
But outside of that,
he did make a couple of really nice defensive plays
earlier on in the game to prevent an odd man rush
and to prevent a player from just going on a breakaway
and stuff like that.
He was great in this game.
And you look at the underlying numbers for him this game as well.
Played 20 minutes at 5-on-5 ice time.
When he was on the ice,
the penguins had nearly 78% of the shot attempts
in 80% of the scoring chances,
25 scoring chances for,
six scoring chances against,
12 high danger chances for,
three high danger chances against.
Again, those high danger chances against
came at the end of regulation
where he kind of just made a couple of dumb mistakes.
But overall, really nice game from him.
That's a step in the right direction.
And I want to see more games like that for Carlson.
He's been pretty up and down so far.
I felt like he had a very good start,
those first three to four.
four-ish games playing some of the best hockey he's played as a penguin.
But after that, you know, especially during this losing streak,
wasn't playing that well, was out to lunch in his own zone, wasn't doing enough
offensively.
This game, he got back to basics.
He got back to the level that we saw him play at earlier on this season.
And even though you did have a couple of, again, bad plays in his own zone in the final
five minutes, he still was very involved offensively in this game.
And according to Penguin's historian Bob Grove, he finished with 20,
one shot attempts tonight, or last night, I should say. That's the most by a Penguins player
in the last 10 seasons. He was on one in this game, and I hope that it continues heading into Saturday
against Montreal and for the rest of the season. If the Penguins want to get anywhere,
Eric Carlson has to be a main driver of this team. And last night, like I said, doesn't revive
his season, doesn't make up for the way he's begun this season, but it was a very solid
step in the right direction.
And he'll have another chance to take another step in the right direction.
And for the penguins to get two wins in a row on Saturday night when the Montreal
Canadians come to town.
Hunter and I are going to get you set for that game when we come back.
But before we do that, we have to tell you about our last sponsor.
And that is Fandul.
Get ready to tackle the NFL action with Fandul, America's number one sportsbook.
Because right now, new customer.
can bet $5 and get $150 in bonus bets if you win.
The Fandul Sportsbook app gives you everything you need to place live bets on the NFL all in one place.
So when you get a hunch in the middle of the game, say this Sunday with the Steelers out of action,
you've got your NFL Sunday, take it up, and you're watching the quad box,
and you want to make some bets on any of those four games.
You can check out the latest stats, view live play-by-play,
and so much more on the same page where you place your bets.
Just visit Fandul.com to join today, and you'll get started with $150 in bonus bets if you win your first $5 bet.
That's Fandul.com.
Never waste a hunch and make every moment more with Fandul an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League.
All right, welcome back to the Friday edition of Locked on Penguins.
I'm Patrick Damp alongside the one and only Hunter Hodes.
And we have got one more game to go this week, and that is Saturday.
night when Les Habitants come to PPG Paints Arena.
These teams have faced off once already this season a couple of weeks ago.
They played a game in Montreal with the Penguins coming out victorious, 6-2-3.
So the Penguins will look to get another victory against the Montreal Canadians.
And I just have to start here.
They are coming off a 6-3 loss to the Washington Capitals.
and their head coach, Martan Saint-Louis, with just the best quote,
I think I've heard this season about their game against the caps,
saying you just throw up all over yourself,
saying that they played that poorly against the Washington Capitals.
So this is a team that is in a very similar position as the Pittsburgh Penguins
when it comes to the way their season has begun.
They've played one less game.
They have a record of four, six, and one.
with the penguins being 4-7-1.
This is a team that's looking to take the next step
as they're in the midst of a rebuild.
And the penguins, just like when they played the ducks last night,
have to take advantage of a younger team that is still figuring it out.
And this would be a great time for the penguins to get another win
and build some confidence against the team they have beaten and should beat.
Yes, this is another game that the penguins should win,
even though, again, the record is not good to start the year.
But the Canadians, much like the Ducks, are also one of the worst defensive teams in the league,
also much like the Penguins as well.
The Canadians have given up the second most high danger chances at five on five this season.
Behind who?
You guessed it, the Pittsburgh Penguins.
They have given up 128 high danger chances at five on five this season.
They've also given up 14 high danger goals.
when they're at five on five,
they only have 42% of the shot attempts,
only 43% of the scoring chances.
This team is a wreck in their own zone.
And you saw that on display in that game in Montreal.
The Penguins were kind of doing whatever they wanted
for a good chunk of that game.
Yeah, there were some pushback from the Canadians,
and Tristan Jari didn't really have his best start in that game,
though he did play a really good third period.
But the Penguins, they had their way with the Canadians in that game.
And you want to see more of the same that you did
that game and also more of the same that you just saw in the game against the ducks where the
penguins were kind of skating circles around them and you saw the penguins at least playing
better committed team defense. I mean again, you look at the numbers from last night, the
high danger chances were down for the opposition of the penguins compared to some of the other
games this season. And just watching that game, they were a bit more responsible in their own end,
but also it's kind of hard not to be when you have the puck all game long. So those are something
things I'm looking for in this game. Obviously, the Canadians, this is still very much a team
that is rebuilding trying to take that next step. They do have some pieces that we talked about
on the show before, who are very fun to watch, namely, Lane Hudson. I mean, he is a one-man
wrecking crew breaking the puck out from his own end. He is a treat to watch. Again, very, very
mini Quinn Hughes vibes I get when I watch him. He still needs to work on the defensive aspect
of his game, but offensively, he is a treat to watch in the offensive zone. You
also have, of course, Jiraeslovsky, who's off to a good start this season.
Only has one goal, but still almost a point per game.
Nick Suzuki has four goals and 13 points and 11 games.
Cole Cawfield is off to one hell of a start.
He has 10 goals and 11 games.
So you always have to be aware when he's out there.
But still, this is a game that I think the Penguins should be able to win.
You played very well against Anaheim, another team that's not good defensively.
You have the puck all game long.
I want to see that again.
And I also want to see, you know, another game in a row where you continue
playing better team defense in your own zone.
Montreal, at least in my opinion, their young talent is better than Anaheim's right now.
They'll make you pay more than Anaheim's young talent, especially someone like Cole Calfield.
So the Penguins will still have to play diligent in their own zone.
But this is still a game that's very much there for the taking.
And again, you want to start stringing some wins together if you want to get your season back on track.
I know people.
That's not breaking news or anything here.
But overall point is this is a game.
you should win. Yeah, the biggest difference to me between the Anaheim game and now the upcoming
Montreal game is that you don't exactly have a world beater behind this team in the net. You have
a tandem of Sam Montembow and Caden Primu. Montembo had a great first game of the season when
the Habs beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, but it's kind of been all downhill from there for him. A record
of three and four, three point six, seven goals against average, eight ninety one save,
percentage and then Caden Primo, not a whole lot better.
One, two, and one record.
4.38 goals against average in an 861 save percentage.
So for the Penguins, again, you're playing a team that is not very good defensively.
So you have to have a very similar effort as you had on Thursday night.
You have to own the puck.
You have to put as much to the net as you can and try to establish long possessions in the
Montreal zone.
because unlike the Ducks, you're not going to have a Lucas Dostel back there to make up for some of those mistakes.
You will be able to break that wall hopefully a lot sooner.
And when you're a young team like Montreal, who is waiting to take the next step but isn't quite ready and the way their season has gone,
you pop a couple early goals and this team is just going to think, oh, here we go again, this is it.
and you can take advantage of that.
So for the Penguins on Saturday night,
I want to see a very similar effort as to what I saw on Thursday,
because as we've talked about it,
and we'll get you ready for it next week,
Penguins have a huge week coming up with a ton of metropolitan games,
and they are not going to be easy whatsoever.
So you want to go into those games with a little bit of momentum,
with some points build up,
and you want to be feeling yourself a little bit.
You could tell in the second period last night,
this team was not feeling very confident in themselves.
You could see the way they were playing.
There wasn't a lot of swagger.
There wasn't a lot of juice.
And then they come out in the third period,
get a quick goal from Sidney Crosby.
And they kind of start remembering,
all right, we can do this.
We might not be what we once were,
but we can do this because then from that point on
until about the last five minutes of regulation,
they dominated that game.
They were all over the ducks.
And I want to see a similar effort this coming Saturday.
Yeah, you saw them having fun, especially in the third period.
Obviously, in overtime, you saw all the smiles come out.
But I felt like the biggest thing last night, we talked about it in the preview.
They had fun in that game.
And I want to see that carry over into this one.
Another thing I want to see carryover as well, I felt like Michael Bunting actually played
one of his better games of the season on Thursday against the ducks.
He was getting chances all night long.
There was one right in the game.
front about five, ten feet out where Dostol just made one heck of a save on him.
And you saw Bunting just look up to the heavens like, what do I got to do to get a goal this
year?
He was playing really well, was getting physical.
You saw him at a little bit in the Minnesota game as well.
But I felt like this game against the Ducks was one of his best games of the season.
Hopefully that can carry over into this game against Canadians as well, because I do want
to see him finally get a goal this season.
And you made a point about Monsonbo.
I understand his numbers are a bit down this year.
But I will say it is hard playing behind that Montreal defensive group considering how bad they've been.
I do think Montenbo, he's better than the numbers that you see with his goals against average.
His goals, he'll have expected his same percentage, all that.
So still, I expect him to play well in net for the Canadians as well as he can.
But he's also playing behind a train wreck of a defensive team in the Canadians this year.
Right.
And you just want to make sure that you can make those two work in tandem.
They don't have the greatest defensive system.
While Sam Montembow has shown some potential,
you will have more of an opportunity to break through with him
than you would again, say Lucas Dostel.
So we will see,
but 7 o'clock Saturday night at PPG Paints Arena,
Penguins and Les Habitants for a Saturday night matchup in the Berg.
We will be back on Monday to recap that game.
It will be Marshall Monday.
We'll get his thoughts on the week that was,
as well as get you ready,
for the week coming up.
But until then, for Hunter Hodes, I'm Patrick Dam.
Thank you, as always, for tuning in.
Have a great weekend.
And we will talk to you once again on Monday.
