The Penguins start out with the same lineup as last game, save the goalie rotation. The lines wouldn\u2019t last this way for long.<\/p>\n
The Maple Leafs welcome William Nylander back to the lineup following a two-game injury absence and are going with these groups:<\/p>\n
The start of the game is lots of skating, few whistles. Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust team up down low, make the centering pass for Filip Hallander and he\u2026shanks the shot well wide of the net. Noel Acciari also leaves the game for unknown reasons. Soon after lines are changed to the following:<\/p>\n
Evgeni Malkin jumps up with Crosby and Rust, Ben Kindel centers Anthony Mantha and Ville Koivunen.<\/p>\n
The lines get even more mixed up than that at due to only having 11; Connor Dewar breaks up a pass, Philip Tomasino gets a great center lane drive and that opens up a lane for Crosby to find Erik Karlsson inching in along the right side. Karlsson measure up Anthony Stolarz and goes bar down on him. 1-0 Pens.<\/p>\n
Owen Pickering tackles a guy in the offensive zone away from the puck, the refs frown upon that. Toronto gets the first power play of the game as a result. The Pens kill it off.<\/p>\n
Crazy play develops with the puck flipping up in the air over the ice after Ryan Shea takes a shot that hits Stolarz. It looks like Morgan Rielly hit the puck with his stick, Kindel took a swing but it\u2019s tough to tell if he made contact. Then the puck falls down, hits the ice and slides over the goal-line. The refs immediately call it a good goal, take a video review and confirm what they saw. Goal stands. 2-0 Pens. It\u2019s credited to Kindel, which makes little sense being as the only time he could have touched it was when the puck was above the cross-bar, but hey, who can get immersed in the details, I guess officially he touched it at some point in the scramble and it ended up being good.<\/p>\n
Auston Matthews rings a shot off the outside of the post then soon after the horn sounds for the intermission. Shots are 8-5 Pens, action-packed period despite the lack of shots on net.<\/p>\n
We make it to the first TV timeout and Toronto has 0 shots on goal in the period. Always a good sign, the Leafs aren\u2019t having much luck dealing with Pittsburgh\u2019s speed and pressure game in the early going tonight. With just over 10 minutes left, Nylander flings a puck from the right wall, not much of a shot but it counts. Nothing comes of it and within seconds Tomasino is off on a 2-on-1, which he narrowly misses the net.<\/p>\n
The Pens get their first power play of the night, courtesy of Evgeni Malkin. Malkin jumps into the play, steals the puck and receives a stick on his hands for it. The power play converts, Malkin feeds Kindel who wires a shot through Stolarz. 3-0 visitors.<\/p>\n
Nylander is headed to the box for Pittsburgh\u2019s second power play of the night. They could have put the dagger in this game with a goal, but aren\u2019t able to get it.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll have to settle for a 3-0 lead and shots of 24-8 in totality through 40 minutes. It\u2019s been even more lopsided on the ice than that, the Leafs are on the struggle bus big time.<\/p>\n
Toronto wakes up finally for the third period, Auston Matthews wins a draw against Crosby and then separates from him. Jake McCabe hits Matthews with a stretch pass and he\u2019s off to the races. Matthews fires a low shot through the five-hole of Jarry to get the Leafs on the board. 3-1 with 16:29 to play.<\/p>\n
Toronto gets another shift in the o-zone, a crazy bounce puts the puck on Nylander\u2019s stick after he gloves it down and he gets a backhander through. 3-2 with 15:13 to go.<\/p>\n
Timeout by the Pens to break up the momentum. They make it to the TV timeout too, but aren\u2019t out of the woods. Another offensive zone shift begats another Nylander goal, this time a slapshot from way back near the blueline. 3-3 game, 13:05 still to go.<\/p>\n
Karlsson takes a punch\/crosscheck from Sammy Blais to the back of the head and the Pens are back to the power play. It\u2019s the worst Pittsburgh power play of the night, Matthews got a rush shot that was probably the best scoring chance of the power play.<\/p>\n
Toronto gets the go-ahead goal with 6:17 to go. 5\u20199\u201d, 180 pound Nic Robertson shrugs off Owen Pickering from the wall and drives to the net. Harrison Brunicke can\u2019t get there in time to break it up and Bobby McMann hacks it in. 4-3 TOR.<\/p>\n
The Pens pull Jarry and get the puck setup in the offensive zone. They aren\u2019t able to generate much and the final buzzer hits.<\/p>\n
Tough one to stomach, on the surface a 4-3 road loss to Toronto at the end of a road trip might not sound a surprising or terrible outcome. Circumstantially, blowing a 3-0 lead and wasting what could have been a very quality performance can only be seen as a disappointment for the Pens. They get a few days to go back home, practice and regroup for Washington coming to town on Thursday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Penguins start out with the same lineup as last game, save the goalie rotation. The lines wouldn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":354172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[54699,293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-354171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-game-recaps","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115489517998393878","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}