The Pittsburgh Penguins are returning home from their travels out west, and are a much different team heading into the Steel City than the one when they first left.
The Penguins swept the west coast by beating all three California teams, to even up their record at 6-6-0. It was the first team they had swept California since the 1996-97 season.
The road trip concluded with an overtime thriller in Los Angeles against the Kings. LA is no easy matchup for a team at full strength, but for Pittsburgh, they battled while starting their third-string goaltender Magnus Hellberg.
Hellberg had come in for Tristan Jarry the game prior after leaving with an injury, but Thursday night was Hellberg’s first start as a member of the Penguins.
And man was he tested.
The Swede faced 37 shots from a high powered Kings offense, stopping 34 of them and keeping the Penguins alive into overtime. Hellberg made several key stops that kept the game close, and in overtime, stood on his head and allowed the Penguins to score…and then score again in OT to win it.
Bryan Rust’s first overtime goal was overturned after it was ruled he was offside. But he would not be denied.
In the end, his second goal was fancier anyways, and the celebration was better as well.
A win is a win, but for the Penguins, they got three very different types of wins in three different games.
Pittsburgh bullied San Jose for a 10-2 win, and looking back, met the Sharks just in time. Since their second straight game allowing 10 goals, the Sharks have been agents of chaos. They got their first win of the season against the Philadelphia Flyers in their next game, and most recently, may have just gotten Edmonton Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft fired.
But regardless, that game was a “get right” night for the Penguins. An game where Pittsburgh had an opponent that they definitely should have beat actually played out the way that it needed to, with a massive win. That’s something that has been hard to come by for the team in recent times.
Next up, they traveled further south to Anaheim, where they hoped to enact some revenge on a team that had beaten them in the final seconds in Pittsburgh just a week prior.
In a bid for revenge, the Penguins shut out the Ducks with a combined effort by Jarry and Hellberg. The Ducks are a much different and, by extension, much better team this season than last, so a win against Anaheim is nothing to downplay. The Ducks had won six games in a row heading into that contest.
And to wrap things up, the Penguins met the Kings in LA, with questions swirling around their net as Jarry was ruled out for the time being (he remains day-to-day) and the team was forced to call up another goaltender to serve as backup.
With their depth being tested, the Penguins started a man named Hellberg in the City of Angels (as pointed out by Josh Getzoff), and it worked well enough to secure victory against a very good LA team.
The Kings were 8-2-2 heading into last night, and are in serious Stanley Cup contention talks as the season begins to take better shape. And yet, the Penguins hung around.
Even with sloppy defensive play and a goal that Hellberg would definitely like to have back, the Penguins never let the game get out of reach and pushed it to overtime, where they reigned in the second point on their second attempt.
And while the Penguins did not score on the power play, special teams was the difference in this game, as Pittsburgh’s Lars Eller scored a shorthanded goal to tie the game at 2-2 in the second period.
The Penguins, albeit probably not intentionally, discovered a weakness in LA’s Phoenix Copley’s game. Pittsburgh scored twice on wraparound goals, once in the third period courtesy of Sidney Crosby’s backhand, and again in overtime as Bryan Rust sought to avenge his called back offside goal.
Now, coming back home and set to spend a while on the east coast, this trip could be the turning point this Penguins team needed after an abysmal start to the year.
The Penguins faced three very different opponents, not only in terms of competitiveness but also playing style, and Pittsburgh bested them all.
Climbing out of a 3-6-0 hole, this team now finds themselves even at 6-6-0, and that is huge for this team.
Were they perfect on this road trip? No, and their defensive mishaps is a key thing that requires more attention moving forward. But they won. And they did it in dramatic fashion.
Above all else, it’s a huge spirit boost for this team, who had some pretty bad vibes heading out west after several humiliating losses.
But it never rains in California, and the Penguins hope to take that sunshine and good vibes and bring them back to Pittsburgh.
(Featured photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
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