RECAP: Bruins Get Black Friday Benefit Over Penguins

Pregame

The Penguins (11-9-3) faced off against the Boston Bruins (9-7-4) in a Black Friday showdown.

Bob Grove notes that the Penguins haven't found much success in Beantown:

And not a lot of success overall:

With that, the Penguins rolled out this lineup:

Riley Sheahan anchoring the second line. The bottom six in shambles. What fun!

Ian Cole being a healthy scratch is a bit of a head scratcher, too.

The Bruins looked like this:

Anton Khudobin was in net for the B’s, not Tuukka Rask.

1st Period

And 32 seconds into the game, the Penguins were sent to the box. Patric Hornqvist was called for tripping. 2 minutes and a few Matt Murray saves later, the Penguins were back even.

With 13:47 left in the period, David Krejci buried the first goal of the game after the Penguins tried to do too much when trying to move out of their zone.

The Bruins dominated early on and were rewarded for their efforts.

With 9:09 left, Sean Kuraly buried a nice one-timer to give the Bruins a 2-0 lead.

Bryan Rust was called for hooking and, once again, the Penguins would be down a man for 2 minutes. The penalty was successfully killed.

With 43 seconds left in the period, the Penguins were given a power-play when Krejci was called for hooking. The period would end and the Penguins would take 1:17 of power-play time into the second period.

Looks like the tryptophan got the better of the Penguins in the first period. It was an ugly 20 minutes.

2nd Period

2 minutes in and still on the power-play, Jake Guentzel cut the deficit to one goal after a barrage of beautiful passes.

At the halfway mark of the period, the Bruins won an offensive zone face-off and Matt Grzelcyk would score the first goal of his NHL career. The puck looked to be initially stopped by Murray, but it trickled past the equipment for a 3-1 Boston lead.

With 6 minutes to go in the period, The American Hero and former Bruin, Phil Kessel, cut the deficit in half again. The Penguins were able to keep the puck in the offensive zone off of a Boston turnover and Kessel took his signature short-side snipe.

With about two minutes left, there was a net-front scrum in front of Khudobin where the puck clearly crossed the goal line, but Khudobin was the beneficiary of an early whistle while he had no control of the puck. Sidney Crosby looked like he shot the puck off of the goalie’s stomach.

The referees would determine, after video review, that the goal was actually legal.

Bruins coach, Bruce Cassidy, challenged the goal call, citing goalie interference. The goal call stood and the game was tied.

After all of these shenanigans, the period came to a close with a score of 3-3.

Sidney Crosby looked like a man possessed in the second period and was rightfully rewarded with a goal.

Talk about a tale of two periods. The Penguins rebounded nicely in the second period and it shows where it counts.

3rd Period

With 14:54 left in the game, the Penguins turned it over at the blue line, David Pastrnak was found on a breakaway, and he gave the Bruins a 4-3 lead.

After the Bruins regained the lead, both teams really couldn't get much of anything going offensively. The Penguins had a few good stretches of zone time, but no goals to show for it.

Still down a goal, the Penguins pulled Murray from the net with 96 seconds left in the game.

The Penguins never scored another goal and lost this one by a score of 4-3.

Final Thoughts

• Resilience was on display today for the Pens. After going down 2-0 early in the first period and then 3-1, they clawed back to tie it at 3. Another defensive hiccup let the Bruins take the lead for good.
• Three losses in a row is, uh, not good. The Pens will have to forget this tough loss rather quickly because they're back in action tomorrow against the Lightning.
• You can try to forget this loss too by eating whatever food you have left from yesterday.