Recap: Avalanche overcome Sidney Crosby’s hat trick to beat Penguins

Sidney Crosby scored a natural hat trick within a 5:34 stretch of the second and third periods last night, but it wasn’t enough as the Pittsburgh Penguins fell 6-3 to the Colorado Avalanche.

“It’s not easy when Sid gets going,” Avs star center Nathan MacKinnon said. “He starts kind of galloping out there.”

Crosby was galloping indeed as everything he touched turn into goals for a magical stretch. On his first goal, he had a breakaway that was stopped by goalie Philipp Grubauer, but Crosby was able to literally stuff the rebound in the net, at this point to make the game a 3-1 Colorado lead.

Crosby’s second goal came from a horrible angle along the wall, where he caught the goali slipping off his angle and put the puck in the net to make the score 3-2.

The hat trick was completed with Crosby receiving a pass from Dominik Simon, firing and again finding his rebound to make it 3-3 early in the period.

However, that was as close as the Penguins would get. Colorado would go on to win their sixth straight game when Gabriel Landeskog scored later in the third period. MacKinnon would tack on an empty netter and then Colorado got one more goal in garbage time to get to the 6-3 final.

“I thought Sid tried to will us a win with his effort,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “He was terrific all night long. I loved our fight. I thought our commitment level increased as the game went on.”

As the Penguins did mount their comeback after starting the game in a 3-0 hole they did play a strong game, as Sullivan noted. It just wasn’t enough to overcome the strong first line of Colorado.

Pittsburgh had a key third period power play while the game was tied that Crosby saw a turning point in the loss.

“We have the best power play in the league. We need to put games away.”

The Pens were unable to do that and dropped this final game of a quick two game road trip after defeating Winnipeg a night earlier in the first game of it.

Pittsburgh returns home on Saturday to face their rivals the Flyers for the first time this season. A look at the schedule shows several weaker teams coming up, so Pittsburgh (10-9-5) will need to get some victories to move up in the standings.