PITTSBURGH -- The Eastern Conference first-round series between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the New York Rangers shifts to Pittsburgh for Game 3 Monday night, tied at 1-1. Here's what to watch for at the 7 ET game:
You Do Know When You Whack A Guy In The Mush, That's A Penalty?: It’s quite amazing the series is as tight as it is, given the number of ill-advised penalties the Penguins have taken. Through two games, the Pens have been whistled for 12 minors and coach Mike Johnston figures almost half are the reckless or preventable kind, like the inadvertent high-sticking calls that went against Chris Kunitz and Ian Cole in the first period of Game 2. Penalty troubles got the Pens behind in Game 1 and they could not recover, losing 2-1. They avoided a series death sentence by killing off six of seven man-advantage opportunities by the Rangers in Game 2. But to a man, the Penguins say they understand that to continue to send the Rangers to the power play is to shorten this series exponentially.
That Said, If You Aren’t Walking Through A Door, You’re Bumping Your Nose: On the flip side of the Pens’ penalty issues has been the Rangers' lack of finish on the power play. They scored a power-play goal in each of the two games but at 2-for-12, they have missed an opportunity to take control of this series. The Rangers worked on the power play Monday morning. Power-play quarterback Keith Yandle (who has two PP playoff assists) is feeling under the weather and did not skate Monday morning, although coach Alain Vigneault expects Yandle to be in the lineup for Game 3, which puts a wrinkle in the Rangers' plans. "Not 100 percent sure what we're going to do tonight," Vigneault said of the power play. "In the third period, we were more successful at generating what you need to generate on the power play. There were a couple of changes made to the personnel. Looked at a couple of other things today and we’ll come up with a plan for tonight. "The Penguins, meanwhile, were blanked on the power play in Game 1 but rebounded nicely with a 2-for-4 night that was a key to their Game 2 victory. It's called opportunism and so far the Pens have been the more opportunistic.
Pens Awaken: The main storyline coming out of Game 2 was the emergence (re-emergence?) of Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, who scored twice in the second period to give the Pens a 3-1 lead they would hold through the end of their 4-3 victory. Crosby had scored just once in his previous 19 playoff games so, yes, a sense of relief from up and down an injury-depleted Penguins lineup. For me, the bigger breakout came from Chris Kunitz, who has had a miserable regular season by his standards and has frankly not shown well in the playoffs the last couple of seasons, picking up just one goal in his last eight games last spring. Kunitz was reunited with Crosby on the team's top line in Game 2, and scored and added two assists -- including a lovely feed to Crosby late in the second period. Of course, it is one thing to awake, it is quite another to stay awake. Game 3 will be a good test for that kind of alertness because Johnston will keep the trio of Crosby, Kunitz and Patric Hornqvist together at least to start.
Exerting Their Will: The Rangers will be without defenseman Kevin Klein once again (although he was on the ice Monday morning), but they are healthier and deeper than the Penguins, who are missing three of their top defensemen in Olli Maatta, Kris Letang and Christian Ehrhoff, who did not skate Monday and is not showing signs of recovery from a concussion. The challenge for the Rangers is to disrupt the Penguins in their own zone by pressuring the undermanned Pens defensive corps. "I think they don't care about matchups," Pens forward Daniel Winnik said Monday. "They've got four good lines. Teams that really struggle on the road struggle to get away from the matchups the home team wants. They are a really deep team. There’s a reason they won the Presidents' Trophy," Winnik said. Johnston has tried to simplify the options for his blueliners and is relying on his forwards to be defensively responsible to limit mistakes. So far, at least after the first period of Game 1, that hasn’t really been the case. On the other side of the "will" coin is the fact the Penguins believe they are much more emotionally in control than they were a month or six weeks ago. "We were taking stupid penalties, emotional penalties. Yelling at referees after plays didn’t go our way," defenseman Ben Lovejoy said Monday morning. Now, in spite of the rash of minor penalties, he insists they aren't losing their cool and that was evident in Game 2. "It is undisciplined but it’s not us losing our cool," Lovejoy said. "I thought that was one of the best games we’ve had since I’ve been here at keeping our composure. We weren’t flipping out at the referees. When we thought Sid got a high hit, that would have derailed us four or five weeks ago. ... It would have rattled us. But we stayed cool, we went back out and we knew the ultimate objective was not to get back at the Rangers, but to win the game.”
Expected Lineups:
Penguins
Chris Kunitz-Sidney Crosby-Patric Hornqvist
Daniel Winnik-Evgeni Malkin-David Perron
Beau Bennett-Brandon Sutter-Steve Downie
Blake Comeau-Maxim Lapierre-Nick Spaling
Paul Martin-Ben Lovejoy
Rob Scuderi-Ian Cole
Rangers
Rick Nash-Derick Brassard-Mats Zuccarello
Chris Kreider-Derek Stepan-J.T. Miller
Carl Hagelin-Kevin Hayes-Martin St. Louis
Tanner Glass-Dominic Moore-Jesper Fast
Keith Yandle-Matt Hunwick