Penguins defense gets back on track in win against Rangers

Even if his team had given up at least the equivalent of a touchdown in its two previous games, captain Sidney Crosby didn’t feel substantial alterations were needed to get the Pittsburgh Penguins’ house in order.

In Crosby’s eyes, an adjustment here and a tweak there would fortify the Penguins’ typically stout defensive structure.

“We made some mistakes,” Crosby said via video conference. “There’s been times where we’ve put ourselves in bad spots as far as giving up some pretty good chances. But we generated some good ones, too. It’s just about tightening up our game a little bit and giving ourselves a chance.”

The Penguins largely did that during Thursday’s 5-2 road win against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden.

It wasn’t perfect by any means. The Rangers had a handful of quality chances, including two on mostly vacant nets that resulted in missed shots and an unsuccessful penalty shot. But the Penguins largely limited the number of high-end scoring opportunities, holding the Rangers to 24 shots.

It was a stark contrast to the Penguins’ previous two outings, an 8-4 road loss to the Rangers on Tuesday and a 7-5 setback on the road to the Boston Bruins Saturday.

“We know, going forward, if we want to have success, we need to play a good defensive game with a five-man unit out there,” defenseman Kris Letang said. “We tightened up today, and we got the result.”

The Penguins got a good result 6 minutes, 26 seconds into regulation. Taking a cross-ice pass from defenseman Marcus Pettersson, rookie forward Radim Zohorna motored his 6-foot-6, 220-pound frame up the right wing, blew past Rangers defenseman Libor Hajek and attacked the net, tucking a forehand shot past goaltender Igor Shesterkin’s right skate for his second career goal.

It was a dominant display of speed and skill by a Czech Republic native who has less than four months’ worth of experience playing in North America.

“I did this in the Czech (Republic), and I did it in the AHL (with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton),” Zohorna said. “I was in full speed and went and tried to skate and go to the net. I was a little bit lucky, and I scored a goal. It was nice.”

After a power-play goal by Rangers forward Colin Blackwell, his 11th of the season, tied the score 1-1, at 2:02 into the second, the Penguins responded at the 3:23 when Letang’s pass attempt from the right half wall of the offensive zone glanced off Rangers forward Chris Kreider’s stick and deflected under Shesterkin’s left leg for his seventh goal.

“I really calculated everything and wanted to hit that (stick),” Letang quipped.

Zohorna helped generate another goal at 11:28 of the second, this time feeding Evan Rodrigues on a power-play chance.

Taking a pass low to the left of the Rangers’ net, he fed the puck to the slot for Rodrigues, who snapped an immediate shot past Shesterkin’s left skate for his fifth goal.

After goaltender Tristan Jarry snuffed out a penalty shot by Kreider at 17:59 of the second, the Penguins secured victory at 10:29 of third period when forward Jason Zucker scored from the slot with a backhander — his sixth of the season — off a pass from the right wing by Rodrigues.

The Rangers persisted as forward Kevin Rooney got his sixth goal at 13:48 of the third, but the scoring was capped at the 18:29 mark when Penguins forward Mark Jankowski collected his fourth goal on an empty net.

Jarry made 22 saves on 24 shots and boosted his record to 16-8-2 thanks to some stiffer defense in front of him.

“We can be stingy defensively and still have the ability to generate offense,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “It’s a much better formula for success in this league.”