Penguins hold off Sharks for eighth consecutive win

The Pittsburgh Penguins played their first game of the year Sunday.

Also, it felt like it was their first game in about a year.

To be clear, their 8-5 home win against the San Jose Sharks at PPG Paints Arena was their first contest in two weeks.

Having been caught up in the NHL’s waves of postponements because of surging covid-19 cases, the Penguins were eager to do something — anything — other than practice.

On Sunday, they defeated the Sharks and extended their winning streak to eight games while snapping their five-game postponement streak.

But it wasn’t easy.

Despite having two players — forwards Evan Rodrigues and Bryan Rust — record hat tricks, this contest’s result was very much in doubt until the late stages of the third period.

After putting up six goals in the first period, the Penguins allowed the Sharks to pull within one score early in the final frame before snuffing out any hopes of a comeback.

“Anytime you get up that amount of goals early in a game, as a coaching staff, we’re always concerned because there’s so much hockey left to play,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said. “To a certain extent, you’re fighting against human nature. As much as you try to fend it off, it just seems like it’s human nature to want to exhale and you don’t bring the same level of intensity, you don’t bring the same attention to detail that got you the lead to that point.”

Sunday’s display was the latest game to have featured double-digit goal figures since the NHL return from its holiday break that ballooned to five days because of the league’s ongoing issues with covid-19.

The Penguins, who last played on Dec. 19, went a fortnight between games.

“Anytime there’s a decent amount of time off, guys might be a second or two off behind defensively in reading plays and not quite being in the right spot all the time,” Rust said. “That’s kind of crept into some games you see around the league with some high scores. Teams are going to iron that out pretty quickly.”

The Penguins opened the scoring quickly in this contest as Rodrigues collected his 11th goal of the season all of 63 seconds into regulation.

That was followed by forward Jake Guentzel scoring his team-leading 16th goal at 3:12 of first period. After Rodrigues struck again at 4:11 of the opening period, the Sharks called a timeout, but that tactic did little to stymie the Penguins as Rust scored his third goal at 6:09 of the first to make it a 4-0 game.

The Sharks got on the scoreboard at 15:33 of the first thanks to forward Alexander Barabanov’s fifth goal but scores at 16:29 by rookie forward Kasper Bjorkqvist — who was making his NHL debut — and Rust at 19:32 put the hosts up, 6-1.

After Sharks goaltender James Reimer and his charred blocker were pulled to open the second period and replaced by rookie Zach Sawchenko, Sharks defenseman Brent Burns scored his fourth goal on a power-play chance at 14:27 of the second.

A three-goal outburst to open the final period made it a one-score game. The Sharks got goals from forward Matt Nieto (his second at the 20-second mark), defenseman Erik Karlsson (his ninth at 3:01) and forward Logan Couture (his 12th at 4:09).

The Penguins were able to fend off the rest of the Sharks’ salvos and secured victory after Rodrigues recorded his first career hat trick with a power-play score at 17:59. An empty-net goal at 19:49 resulted in Rust’s fifth career hat trick.

Goaltender Casey DeSmith made 22 saves on 27 shots in a victory that took a long time to secure, both against the context of the calendar as well as within the confines of regulation.

“It’s kind of a mental battle staying fully engaged,” Rodrigues said. “You know in your head you know you have to. But sometimes it’s just natural to let the foot off the gas a little bit. They come back and score a few quick ones. When it got to a one-goal game, everyone snapped back in and knew we had to take care of business. Glad to see we did, obviously.”

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