PITTSBURGH — Under a fixed roof and with a thermostat set in the 70s — maybe not the way the game was originally played but certainly a way that discourages frostbite and other cold-weather-related ailments — the Blues got back to work on Wednesday night in PPG Paints Arena.
As hot as the Blues may be, the Penguins may be even hotter, taking an eight-game win streak into the game, and it was the Blues who were dispatched into the cold, dark Pennsylvania night after a failed challenge of a Penguins goal led to a power play and another goal 12 seconds later, which that quickly turned a Blues lead into a Blues deficit and, ultimately, a 5-3 loss.
Brayden Schenn celebrated his return to the lineup after being out for three weeks with a power-play goal, Jordan Kyrou did more Jordan Kyrou things and Jordan Binnington withstood an early assault from the Penguins but the pressure they put on was unrelenting enough that it eventually wore the Blues down in the third period, where a tying goal by the Penguins seemed inevitable.
The Blues took a 3-2 lead into the third that they had to defend and they were tested early, when Pittsburgh’s Brian Dumoulin shoved Niko Mikkola into goalie Tristan Jarry and Mikkola was called for goalie interference. Blues coach Craig Berube didn’t like it, nor did captain Ryan O’Reilly, who skated over to referee Dean Morton as he was about to signal the penalty, gesturing that Mikkola had been pushed, but Pittsburgh went on the power play, which the Blues killed off convincingly.
With 7:37 to go in the third, the Penguins finally got even, with Sidney Crosby putting in a rebound while making contact with Binnington, knocking his stick from his grasp. Binnington immediately protested but it took the Blues coaching staff longer to reach that conclusion. They eventually did, but they ruled that since Crosby wasn’t in the crease when he contacted Binnington, it wasn’t interference. That gave the Penguins a tie game and a power play when the Blues were charged for delay of game.
Twelve seconds later, Evan Rodrigues scored to put the Penguins ahead.
The Blues’ comeback attempt was stymied by a pair of penalties, first to Pavel Buchnevich for high sticking and then, just before that one ended, another on Tyler Bozak. Pittsburgh got a late goal that the Blues were also upset about and Vladimir Tarasenko got a 10-minute misconduct for his arguing.
The Blues had some puck control issues in the first period that led to both zone time and odd-man rushes for the Penguins and a lot of work for Binnington in net, highlighted by him getting to his left to stop a shot by Bryan Rust with about 12:30 to go. Binnington had to make 14 saves, some, like that one, in pretty close quarters. Meanwhile, the Blues managed just seven shots on goal and only two of them were from inside the hashmarks on the faceoff circles. After the first five minutes, the Blues didn’t generate much of anything at all. Still, they managed to draw a penalty with 17.7 seconds to go that gave them a power play to start the second period.
Berube had both Schenn and Brandon Saad take turns with the first power-play unit on Wednesday morning, with Saad there in case Schenn was limited in his first game back. When the second period began, Schenn was out there and 20 seconds in, scored. Torey Krug held a clearance attempt in at the blueline, passed cross-ice to Schenn who let it rip and put it in the top right corner. It was the 200th goal of his career and his first in almost a month, most of which he had spent watching games while out with an injury.
Pittsburgh continued its steady stream of pressure, and Binnington kept making saves, hitting the 20 mark seven minutes into the second period. After an extended Penguins possession in the Blues zone, in which the Blues just couldn’t get the puck out of the zone for a line change, Justin Faulk got control in the slot and gave it to Tarasenko, who skated the puck up ice and held on to it rather than dump it while the Blues got fresh bodies on ice. With the puck along the boards, Tarasenko fed the late arriving and conspicuously open Kyrou, whose shot from the slot made it 2-0.
For Kyrou, the reigning NHL No. 1 star of the week after his four-point performance in the Winter Classic, it was his third straight game with a goal, giving him four in three games and 13 on the season, putting him one behind his total in 55 games last season.
The lead seemed to settle the Blues down, and then the game got hectic. With 7:40 to go in the second, Crosby and Mikkola got in a cross-checking battle in front of the Blues goal, which soon led to Mikkola getting his glove in Crosby’s face, bloodying Crosby’s nose, which soon led to linesmen and both teams descending on the duo. Both got slashing penalties, the game went to four-on-four and 28 seconds later, it went to 4-on-3 when Krug was called for cross-checking. Forty-two seconds after that, Bryan Rust took a backhand shot that Binnington blocked, but the puck flew up in the air and Rust swatted it in off of Binnington to make it 2-1.
That brought Krug out of the box and made it four-on-four again, and 19 seconds after Rust had scored, Colton Paryako put in his fourth goal of the season, to make it 3-1 and cause Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan to lift backup goalie Casey DeSmith from the game in favor of Jarry, who he had been saving to start the Penguins’ game in Philadelphia on Thursday.
With 4:14 to go in the second, Rust scored again, finishing off a three-on-two to make it 3-2. After Binnington had stopped the first 20 shots he faced, gave up two on the next four shots.
