PITTSBURGH — Forty seconds into Saturday’s loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs, Sidney Crosby was booting the boards in frustration and the Penguins were already behind.
They gifted the Leafs the early lead with an unfathomably bad line change, the sort of personnel switch you see at a pickup game at your neighborhood rink.
Four Penguins, including both defensemen, turned and skated to the bench as the puck rimmed around the boards and out of their zone. Auston Matthews saw that Kris Letang had vacated the right side of the ice and snapped a pass up to Mitch Marner, who scored on one of the easiest breakaways he will ever get.
“That just can’t happen that early in the game,” Jake Guentzel later lamented.
They were unable to recover in the 4-1 loss. The Leafs controlled the game from start to finish as they snapped the Penguins’ winning streak at five. It didn’t help that the Penguins had a tying goal wiped off the board in the second period.
The Penguins’ last loss also came against the Leafs, who won here Nov. 15.
“It’s tough to give one up on the first shift. Definitely,” Jeff Carter said. “But that being said, there’s still 59 minutes of hockey left. For whatever reason we couldn’t pull it together in the first [period] and that kind of set us back a little bit.”
Both teams were playing for the second straight day. The Penguins dominated the Flyers in Philadelphia on Friday evening. Meanwhile, the Leafs won in Minnesota and then had to hop on a flight halfway across the country to Pittsburgh.
Despite those circumstances, the Leafs had their legs Saturday. They didn’t give the Penguins much time and space and had them on their heels for much of the night. At one point they were outshooting the Penguins by a 24-6 margin.
The Penguins also lacked the attention to detail that had helped them go streaking. That was most evident when they spaced out at the end of their first shift.
Coach Mike Sullivan spoke before the game about how the Penguins must limit rush chances for the Leafs, who killed them with their counterattack when these two teams met here Nov. 15. Then their top-line players coasted to the bench while Marner skated in alone to deke Casey DeSmith for the opening goal.
“It’s a bad line change and we need more awareness,” Sullivan said curtly.
Sitting on the bench as the Leafs celebrated, Crosby kicked the boards three times with his skate. He soon disappeared down the tunnel with an equipment manager right behind him. Crosby would miss several minutes as he got repairs.
His teammates were also unable to find their footing in the first period after giving up that deflating goal 40 seconds in. They allowed four odd-man rushes during the period, per Sportlogiq, including a 2-on-1 with less than 10 seconds left. DeSmith was sharp in the first, stopping 16 shots to keep the Penguins in it.
“We have been playing some good hockey. For whatever reason, we came out a little flat in the first and they have some legs,” Carter said. “They took it to us.”
The Leafs pulled away in the second period, after the Penguins had a Rickard Rakell goal waved off by the officials. He couldn’t cleanly sweep in the loose puck that sat in the blue paint behind Leafs goalie Erik Kallgren. He eventually nudged it over the line, but not before an official had whistled the play dead.
The NHL sent out a statement saying that the referee said he lost sight of the puck. But Rakell indicated that he was given a different explanation on the ice.
“I heard the whistle before I shot the puck in. I saw it was loose the whole time,” he said of the confusing call. “The referee told me that if the puck was still in motion the goal would have counted. But it stopped. So they had to call it off.”
The Leafs pushed their lead to 2-0 just over two minutes later. Marcus Pettersson and Letang botched a breakout and Marner, who snatched the puck from Letang in the right corner, set up Pontus Holmberg in the high slot for the goal.
William Nylander added another 55 seconds after Holmberg scored, working into a frenzy the many, many Leafs fans who made the trip down from Toronto.
Rakell pumped one past Kallgren with 8:22 left to briefly give the Penguins hope. But Matthews, who had a three-point game, scored to put the game away.
Overall, the Leafs outshot the Penguins, 41-26. They had 10 more shots from the slot. And they had seven odd-man rushes, per Sportlogiq, scoring on one.
“We got outplayed. We just got outplayed,” Sullivan said. “Toronto played hard. You’ve got to give Toronto credit. They played hard. They defended hard. They made us work for our offense, and I thought we gave them some easy looks.”
ICE CHIPS
— With Saturday’s win, Toronto took the season series against Pittsburgh, 2-1.
— DeSmith started Saturday after Tristan Jarry got the win in Philadelphia. DeSmith missed one practice earlier in the week with an upper-body injury. But he looked just fine in this one, playing better than the box score would indicate. “Casey played awesome,” Guentzel said. “We left him out to dry a couple of times.”
— Jason Zucker has cooled off. He has gone four straight games without a point and he couldn’t capitalize on three excellent opportunities in the first period, when the Penguins were down a goal. He was left staring at the ceiling in disbelief after he was unable to slap a rebound into the net with Kallgren out of position.
— The Penguins have gone seven straight without giving up a power-play goal. Jan Rutta made a sprawling save during the second to keep that streak going.
— Sullivan stuck with the same lineup the Penguins had deployed throughout their winning streak. Kasperi Kapanen and Chad Ruhwedel were the scratches.
STAT N’AT
1-4-1 — the record in the second half of back-to-backs for the Penguins, who have one of the league’s oldest rosters. Sullivan was asked if age was a factor. “I don’t know the answer, but what I would say to you is that the sample size is pretty small. So it might be difficult to draw any conclusions from that,” he replied.
THEY SAID IT
“All in all, it wasn’t our best night,” Carter said. “But that’s it. We’ll move on.”
COMING UP
Penguins players have the day off Sunday and are scheduled to practice Monday. They will host the Carolina Hurricanes at PPG Paints Arena on Tuesday.
