Penguins win wild Game 3 to take series lead

They did not make it easy on themselves, and it is almost certainly not the way they planned it, but the Pittsburgh Penguins were 7-4 winners over the New York Rangers in Game 3 on Saturday night to take a 2-1 series lead.

The Penguins got depth scoring, including two goals efforts from Evan Rodrigues and Jeff Carter, scored four goals on Igor Shesterkin in the first period to chase him from the game, completely fell apart in the second period to allow a three-goal lead to disappear, and then dominated the third period thanks to some excellent penalty killing and went ahead on a Danton Heinen goal with less than 10 minutes to play.

This series has been a back-and-forth heavyweight fight of extended periods of dominance, with each team carrying the play at different times. Saturday’s game turned out to be no different.

In other words, a lot happened.

Let’s take a look at a few key points.

The Penguins needed depth scoring, and they got it

This has been a storyline for the Penguins all season. At times their secondary scoring has been great. At other times it has been non-existent. The first two games of this series were more of the latter as pretty much all of their offense came from the Sidney Crosby, Bryan Rust, Jake Guentzel line. They needed more from the other three lines. On Saturday, they got that. Crosby and Guentzel (who were both great, for what it is worth) did not factor into the scoring until a couple of empty net goals late, while Rodrigues, Carter, Heinen, and Brock McGinn combined for their first five goals of the game. You can not win consistently in the playoffs as a one-line team, so this had to be a welcome sign for the Penguins.

Special teams has also been a big factor in this series with the Rangers mostly dominating it over the first two games. The Penguins had some good and bad here on Saturday.

Even though the Penguins power play scored two goals, both of them came from their second unit with the first unit badly struggling and giving up its…