The Penguins stick with the same skaters and line as last game and swap out goalies as they’ve done for every game so far in the season, putting Tristan Jarry in for the night.

Minnesota strikes first, Ryan Shea and Kris Letang both get caught in space and slow to cover a player, turns out that’s bad when Kirill Kaprizov is involved. Don’t sleep on the pass velocity, timing and angle from Marcus Johansson either. 1-0 Wild.

The Penguins put the puck in the net, it’s Evgeni Malkin with a spinning shot. However, the refs announce that Justin Brazeau has committed goalie interference and the goal won’t stand. The Pens look at the replays and challenge. The refs aren’t changing their tune, no goal and Pittsburgh picks up a penalty for losing the challenge. Fortunately for them, they’re able to kill the penalty off.

Soon after, Bryan Rust gets called for a trip that looked more like a clean enough hit. The men in stripes certainly weren’t giving any favors out to the Pens early in this one, Pittsburgh’s PK keeps the score even to the end of the period.

Shots are 13-6 MIN in the first period. Pittsburgh lost a lot of momentum when they didn’t get credited with that goal and didn’t have much going on otherwise.

The Pens put the puck in the net with a player in/around the goal area — and this time it counts! Ville Koivunen got knocked down and honestly probably caused a bigger goalie distraction on this instance (a Shea shot) compared to the first play. No matter, this one isn’t getting called back, 1-1 game.

Pittsburgh gets rung up for a too many men, Kris Letang was going for a change, a player jumped on the ice and Letang stayed involved in the play by throwing a shoulder into an opponent, which is an easy call to make there. Pittsburgh again kills it off.

Pittsburgh out-shoots MIN 11-7 in the second period.

The Pens break the game open in the third, Bryan Rust continues his hot production by scoring in front of the net.

Less than a minute later, Pittsburgh gets their first power play of the night and they quickly score after some nice passing. Ben Kindel celebrates his 10th game in the NHL by putting the puck home. 3-1 game after two goals in 1:01 stretch.

Crosby gets called for a trip, clock is working against Minnesota and they can’t get anything going. Goalie gets pulled and Anthony Mantha caps off a 1:56 shift by scoring from way out into the open net. 4-1.

Next up, a trip to Winnipeg on Saturday afternoon where the Pens will look to keep it going in the right direction.