Penguins vs. Wild Recap: Pittsburgh shines in big road victory

The Penguins went on the road for the first time this season, jumped out to an early lead and then exploded in the second period to give them all the space they would need against the Minnesota Wild.

Pittsburgh opened the scoring in the first period with a power play goal, after Brandon Tanev drew yet another penalty (his sixth in just five games, if you’re keeping count). Sidney Crosby, from the left side of the ice, made a nice pass to the right to find Justin Schultz. Schultz put in a tip-able effort for Patric Hornqvist who made no mistakes to notch his third goal of the young season.

Early in the second the Pens kept it up, with Crosby cutting into the zone all alone after taking a pass from Kris Letang, dekeing backhand and lifting it over Wild goalie Devan Dubnyk to make it 2-0 Pittsburgh.

Minnesota would fight back and make it 2-1 with a killer mid-range deflection by Jason Zucker that didn’t give Matt Murray much of a chance on.

But then at this point the Pens really put their foot on the gas and pulled away, scoring three straight goals in the 2:28. First it was Adam Johnson hammering home a rebound off of a Sam Lafferty shot to make it 3-1, for Johnson’s first goal in the NHL.

Letang then finds the bouncing puck and expertly shoots it past Dubnyk to really open things up at 4-1.

As if it couldn’t get worse for MIN, Dubnyk raises his arm for an icing instead of playing the puck, but there’s only one problem. Adam Johnson is way ready to negate the icing and makes a great pass out to Joseph Blandisi and he scores a goal in his first NHL game of the season to make it 5-1.

Jared Spurgeon would score for Minnesota to make it 5-2 going into the second intermission, but by this time the game was about done.

In case there was any doubt though, Jake Guentzel makes it 6-2 midway through the third period when he’s at the net and gets a nice pass from Hornqvist.

The Wild score a couple of garbage time goals to get back to 6-4 but that’s as close as they get. Sam Lafferty gets his first NHL goal on an empty net from 150 feet away to beyond seal the deal.

One thought

• Matt Murray gets to 100 career NHL wins in 165 appearances. He looks and plays like a terminator, and only seems to get noticed when the puck gets by him. But make no mistakes about it, the puck doesn’t get by him all that often.

Pens are back at it tomorrow night in Winnipeg, who also played tonight, winning 3-2 in OT over Chicago.