Takeaways: Penguins No-Show In 5-0 Loss To Minnesota Wild
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Well, there certainly wasn’t much to write home about in this one.
In their first game since returning from the NHL Global Series, the Pittsburgh Penguins were beat down by a hot Minnesota Wild team, 5-0. Minnesota was 7-2-1 coming into the contest, and they buried the Penguins early with three first-period goals.
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After Kirill Kaprizov tipped a Jared Middleton shot for a fourth goal, Penguins’ goaltender Arturs Silovs was pulled in favor of Sergei Murashov, who stopped nine of 10 the rest of the way.
Wild goaltender Filip Gustavsson improved to 6-7-2 and earned the 19-save shutout.
Matt Boldy started things off pretty early on for Minnesota, as he was left all alone at the net-front and deked out Silovs for his 12th goal of the season at just 3:57. Joel Eriksson-Ek followed up with a power play goal midway through the first in the waning seconds of a Blake Lizotte double-minor for high-sticking, and Marcus Johansson scored the third goal for Minnesota just two minutes later on a wrister from the right circle.
Then, a little more than a minute into the second period, Jake Middleton floated a puck toward the net from the right point, and Kaprizov tipped it on the way in to make it 4-0. Boldy added his second of the game near the end of the second to secure the 5-0 win.
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So what went wrong in this one?
“Everything, honestly,” defenseman Ryan Shea said. “As a team, we were bad in the neutral zone. Turned a lot of pucks over in the neutral zone. I don’t know. They got a couple tip goals, pretty much goals off turnovers. So, we just gotta clean up all that, and it’s pretty frustrating.”
Truth be told, the Penguins looked like a team that had last played Sunday on another continent and were thrown back into the fire to face one of the league’s hottest teams. Of course, those aren’t excuses, but it’s safe to say that the Penguins’ situation probably didn’t help matters going into this one.
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Still, one saving grace is…
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