The Penguins give Ben Kindel the night off, which gets Philip Tomasino back into the lineup. Caleb Jones’s injury pulls Matt Dumba back into action, Harrison Brunicke remains watching. The even goalie rotation doesn’t break now, it’s Arturs Silovs’s night.

Hot start for the Penguins, Ryan Shea shoots high on Elvis Merlikins 59 seconds into the night and it goes in.

Entertaining first, both teams trade chances. Boone Jenner and Dumba trade punches in a spirited fight.

Columbus ties it up after a good bit of chances that they earned. You could feel that one coming. Shea tries to ole the stick of Charlie Coyle, not even close. Coyle is there to easily tap in the rebound. Pittsburgh challenges for unknown reasons for goalie interference. Coyle is in the crease but makes less than minimal contact with Silovs. It doesn’t take the refs very long to confirm it’s a good goal, Pens get a penalty for delay of game as a result of the failed challenge.

The Pens get a quick answer, it’s the mutant line. Evgeni Malkin pulls up and sets Anthony Mantha up for an easy zone entry. Mantha does manipulate the shot angle a little by dragging the puck back to help avoid the defender’s stick-check, but not the best of goals for Merzlikins to watch fly by. 2-1.

Shots are 16-7 CBJ in the first. The Pens scored that early goal and didn’t have a bad period, but after that point it looked like Columbus was the more hungry team for the rest of the period, until Mantha popped up at the end. All things considered, Pittsburgh is fortunate to be up by a goal at this point.

The Pens get their first power play, they don’t score but man it was pretty. Merzlikins makes a great stop on Rickard Rakell. The refs take a video review, Sidney Crosby may not have gotten the puck 100% over the line on a follow-up chance but it rolled and was definitely at least 75% over. That’s not enough to count, no goal.

Not scoring there has ramifications and leads to the Blue Jackets tying it up. Unfortunately for him, Parker Wotherspoon gets handcuffed with the puck in his skates a little bit to turn it over. Kent Johnson is there to take it away and make a great setup for Dmitri Voronkov to absolutely hammer home from in front. No chance for Silovs here. 2-2 game.

Whereas, I felt the Pens were lucky in the first period to be ahead, that evened out in the second period. Now it was Columbus’s turn to enjoy a 1-0 period where they got fortunate for that the game to unfolded the way it did. 2-2 game overall, shots are 25-15 in favor of CBJ.

The Jackets take their first lead of the game early in the third. A nice shift of possession for them and some in-zone passes leads to Yegor Chinakhov ending up using some Penguin players as a screen to snap a shot through. 3-2 CBJ.

Columbus keeps going, Connor Clifton is away from the net and Sean Monahan passes through Dumba for Voronkov to direct into the net. 4-2 game.

Pittsburgh uses their timeout to break the momentum and regroup.

Jenner goes to the box for a second Penguin power play on the night, it doesn’t work. Jenner gets a breakaway out of the box but can’t score. The Pens go back to work, Hallander almost scores from in tight and then gets taken down for another Pittsburgh power play. It takes a while but with eight seconds left on it and 5:06 in the game Kris Letang scores. 4-3.

The Pens empty the tank with a Crosby-Malkin-Rust-Letang-Karlsson five-man group. Silovs heads to the bench and Malkin finds Rust with a cross-ice pass. The shot hits the goalie and goes in, tough angle there, Rust made it work for his first goal of the season. 4-4 game with 3:06 to play.

Crosby-Rust-Karlsson start things out for the Pens, Monahan wins the faceoff and Columbus gets the all-important puck possession until Crosby can break up a play and take it bakc,

The game gets crazy, or even crazier – Silovs makes a great stop on Monahan from in front, seconds later Letang shoots the puck over Merlikins’ glove and Ivan Provorov has to save the game by preventing the puck from rolling over the goal line.

More furious action at both sides, somehow neither one can find the winner.

Kent Johnson is first, he quickly goes five-hole and scores.

Rust is the first shooter for the Pens, he matches with a goal on a backhand deke.

Adam Fantilli is next, comes is deliberately and then speeds up with a series of dekes, ending with a forehand shot by Silovs.

Crosby is next, and the next to score. He dekes back to this forehand and finds the back of the net.

Kirill Marchenko takes his turn and makes it 3/3 after another quick five-hole shot.

Malkin has to score to keep the game alive, he skys a shot high. Columbus wins.

  • Always a bummer when the teenage crew of Brunicke and Kindel get held out. It’s one of those things that makes sense in the big picture but draws a sigh to realize a guy like Kindel that scored last game and has been doing so well is going to get managed like that. Even more so for Brunicke missing his second straight game — which could have been influenced by Jones going down and not having a left handed player to team up with Brunicke.
  • Even worse is that Clifton didn’t exactly have a great game (again) and Dumba was probably even worse. Brunicke has to get scratched a second game in a row and go six days between action for that? Not a great trade.
  • Scoring points at an (impressively) alarming rate? Check. On ice for more time than he has any business being out there for? Also check. Ending up on the wrong end of plays in the d-zone? Yep. It might be official that Ryan Shea is this years version of Matt Grzelcyk.
  • Really hated that goal challenge by the Pens. It’s true that you never know what NHL officials will think is goalie interference, but in this instance there wasn’t remotely enough contact to even consider justifying a challenge there. Maybe in the old days when the punishment was losing a timeout, OK, challenge that. But it wasn’t worth going to the penalty kill over. Not sure if that was the coaches or the video coaches radioing down, but someone was way off on that. Luckily, the Pens killed off the penalty and didn’t incur even more damage.
  • That decision notwithstanding, the other coaching inputs were positive. This isn’t the first time Muse has used his timeout to break the other team’s momentum, which has been effective. Loading up the talent with the Crosby-Malkin-Rust-Letang-Karlsson group when you need a goal is another nice touch. That was easier to go to since power plays had the lines shuffled but worked out.
  • Rakell left the game in the third period after blocking a Damon Severson shot with his hand. Looked like the trainers were working on his pinky on the bench before he left. Hopefully no lasting damage there, but that could be bad either way if he has to miss time or has to deal with having a banged up digit.
  • Hallander moved up to the top line in Rakell’s absence until Malkin eventually got there and Blake Lizotte worked up on the third line as part of the reshuffling to deal with that. Mantha jumped up to the top power play group.
  • The start of the third was ugly for the Pens. By the first TV timeout, shots were 8-2 CBJ. Columbus scored 1:55 and 4:54 into the third. Cleary, that’s where the game turned and slipped away until the furious late comeback. Beyond that it was disappointing response and effort for Pittsburgh out the gates. It was a 2-2 game, at home, the other goalie was giving up some goals but the Pens could barely handle the puck. On the flip side, Columbus controlled it and managed things very well.
  • Along those lines, the Columbus forecheck was giving the Pens’ defense a ton of problems. Whether it was Wotherspoon, Shea, Dumba, Letang, you can go down the line pretty much all the blueliners were having big problems with the pressure. Pittsburgh had to play too much in their own end as a result. That’s some natural limitations of the players in the lineup but at the same time you’ve gotta credit Columbus for good play and being one of the tougher performances that the Pens have seen so far this year as far as the other team pressing the issue.
  • Some 3v3 OT’s can be boring. Too tactical, positional. This was not one of those occasions. Both teams were aggressive, there was officially only four total shots but it felt like more with giveaways galore and plenty of quality looks. That was the type of fun that OT is supposed to be.

An unfortunate end to the winning streak, but the Pens did well to at least get a point out of this one after going down 4-2 in the third period. Good effort late to not come up totally empty handed and move onto the next one on Monday night against St. Louis.