It’s a new year, and it’s a new Penguin team! Teenagers Ben Kindel and Harrison Brunicke make the NHL debuts, Justin Brazeau, Anthony Mantha, Parker Wotherspoon, Caleb Jones and Arturs Silovs make their Pittsburgh debut.

The opponent it the Mike Sullivan led New York Rangers.

Nice touch for the first shift of the season, the two rookies in Kindel and Brunicke are joined by the three 20-year teammates in Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang for the drop of the puck. Not subtle to see the future meet the present joined by the past, but poetic just the same.

It starts off as a really good shift, at that. The Penguins spend the whole time in the NYR end, Crosby gets a couple looks down low. Finally the Rangers stabilize and get out an Adam Fox falls easily when he feels a little contact from the back by Brunicke and New York has their first power play and Brunicke gets a ‘welcome to the NHL’ moment.

The Rangers fail to score on their power play, the Penguins do the same later with their first man-advantage of the season.

Pittsburgh strikes for the game’s first goal with 32 seconds to go in the period. Evgeni Malkin slips past Vincent Trocheck on a faceoff and gets the puck to the net. Justin Brazeau is there and the big guy finishes to his backhand with authority. 1-0 Pens.

Shots are 10-7 Pens through 20 minutes, and they have the only goal. It’s deserved too, Pittsburgh had a strong period and had the better of the play.

Fairly uneventful second period in terms of scoring. Ville Koivunen came closest hitting a post with a little over five minutes to go.

Kris Letang went to the penalty box with just over a minute to go for a tripping call. The Pens survive to the horn.

Shots were 13-7 NYR in the second, who started to find their legs and settle into the game a lot more than the early going.

Letang made a great breakup to steer the puck to Mantha, who was behind the defense. Igor Shesterkin robbed Mantha with a big glove save on a nice shot that had a lot of velocity.

There were no more goals until the Rangers got desperate and pulled the goalie late. Brazeau notched his second of the game and Blake Lizotte opened his account with a long-range empty net goal to set the score at the 3-0 final score.

In the end, a nice workmanlike effort from the Penguins to win essentially a 1-0 game until the empty nets were tacked on. They gave the New York crowd nothing at all to cheer about and went about their business well. It’s only one night in a long season, yet that night couldn’t have gone much better in Dan Muse’s mind when it would come to dreaming up the perfect way to out-work, out-chance and out-execute the opposition on the road and earn the first victory of the season.

The Pens are at home on Thursday to meet up with the Islanders and try to build off what they did tonight. Let the season begin!