Tampa Bay starts strong, holds off Penguins
TAMPA, Fla. — Evgeni Malkin is many things.
Champion.
MVP.
Superstar.
“Score,” if you recall one of his early television interviews that morphed into a silly, harmless meme.
Prophet might be his next vocation.
On Wednesday, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ franchise center was asked what was key to taking on the powerful Tampa Bay Lightning.
“First of all, it’s special teams,” Malkin said after a practice at Amalie Arena. “Power play, (penalty kill).”
Also?
“It’s hard to play here,” Malkin said. “We know (the Lightning) always plays unbelievable here at home. It’s huge, the first 20 minutes. When they play at home, they start pretty fast.”
On Thursday, that foreboding warning played out as the Lightning surged to a quick two-goal lead in the first period while a faulty power play sank a comeback attempt by the Penguins in a 4-2 defeat.
The Penguins went 0 for 5 with the man advantage, including a five-on-three sequence that lasted an ample 1 minutes, 34 seconds.
“I just think we’ve got to be better,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “We’ve got to execute. We’ve got to make better decisions. We’ve got to shoot the puck when we’ve got an opportunity. We had some looks five-on-four. You’d like to see us score a goal when we get that five-on-three opportunity. That’s an important point in the game. We’ve got to work to improve in those areas.”
One aspect that needed improvement was the entire first period. The Lightning controlled most of the opening 20 minutes and emerged with a two-goal lead thanks to defenseman Mikhail Sergechev scoring his eighth goal of the season at 9:04 of the first and forward Steven Stamkos collecting his 25th at the 12:55 mark.
“They just came out a little bit hungrier, a little bit more determined, a little bit more disciplined than we did,” Penguins forward Bryan Rust said. “We got on our heels a little bit. They had a really good first period. I just don’t think we were good enough in the first.”
Malkin got the Penguins on the scoreboard at 9:25 of the second period. Penguins forward Patric Hornqvist lobbed a pass from the right wing towards the top of the Lightning crease. Malkin did a drive-by and allowed the puck to bounce off his right leg past goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy’s glove hand for his 17th goal.
Only 32 seconds later, the Lightning restored a two-goal lead when forward Anthony Cirelli netted his 14th goal off a three-on-one rush the very next shift.
The Penguins pulled within one only 3:20 into the third period when Malkin set up rookie defenseman John Marino with a wrister in the left circle for his sixth goal.
At 11:21, officials awarded the Penguins with a two-man advantage, but they could only muster two shot attempts, including a wrister by Rust that clunked off the left post.
“If that’s two inches left … it’s a goal and the whole game is different,” Rust said. “We’ve just got to try to learn from that, and we’ve got to learn to capitalize on those better.”
The Penguins got a scare at 15:50 of the third when Marino took a deflected one-timer in the face. Sullivan indicated medical staffers felt Marino would be fine.
An empty-net goal by Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov, his 25th, secured victory at 19:27 of the third.
Just as Malkin foretold, special teams and the first period were largely the deciding factors in this result.
“We battled hard, apart from the first period where it felt like they had us on our heels,” said goaltender Matt Murray, who made 25 saves, including on a handful of breakaways. “Other than that, we battled hard. It’s just unfortunate that we came up short.”
Seth Rorabaugh is a TribLive reporter covering the Pittsburgh Penguins. A North Huntingdon native, he joined the Trib in 2019 and has covered the Penguins since 2007. He can be reached at srorabaugh@triblive.com.
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