The reports of the Penguins death have been greatly exaggerated.

Exhumed from their early graves, the Penguins players, with the bright lights of Toronto shining down on them, were up for the occasion, putting together their first real, tangibly solid 60 minute effort of the season.

It’s cool, isn’t it?

And for what was basically a 1-0 game, it certainly wasn’t without action or entertainment.  At 5v5 alone, we saw a combined 143 shot attempts (74-nice – Leafs), 115 unblocked shot attempts (62-53 – Pens), 68 shots on goal (35-33 – Pens), 51 scoring chances (30-21 – Leafs), and 22 high danger chances 13-9 – Leafs).

High event hockey, baby.  And in that high event world, you really saw the difference makers be the difference makers.

Crosby, Malkin, and Letang specifically were brilliant.  Still not even sure Auston Matthews even played, but when you’re matched up against the best in the world, it’s hardly surprising.

But, perhaps the most refreshing thing of the night was Matt Murray’s return from concussion.  The game had a playoff feel to it and Playoff Matt came to play in his 38 save effort.  What’s more, and despite how well the Penguins played, they still allowed a significant amount of unblocked shots to occur right in Murr’s kitchen, as has been the case since he broke into the league.

“Dialed in” would be an understatement for how he looked, but if this can be the first step for him and the team to really settling in to this season, look the fuck out, fam.

LINEUP

Let's do this.

Welcome back, @mattmurray_30! pic.twitter.com/vZfLL4ELG3

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) October 18, 2018

As mentioned above, Matt The Murray returned to his throne in the blue paint after a short hiatus with a concussion, opposite of Freddy Andersen, also returning from injury.  With the Leaves center depth, it made sense that the Brassers experiment alongside 87 and 59 came to an end as he reclaimed his place at 3C.  Sheahan was shifted to 4LW, while Maatta-Oleksiak and Johnson-Riikola stayed together after some decent play together on Tuesday against Vancouver.

#Leafs lines vs. Penguins:

Hyman-Tavares-Marner
Marleau-Matthews-Kapanen
Lindholm-Kadri-Brown
Ennis-Gauthier-Leivo

Rielly-Hainsey
Gardiner-Zaitsev
Dermott-Ozhiganov

Andersen
Sparks

— Kristen Shilton (@kristen_shilton) October 18, 2018

First Period

The first period, by and large, was controlled by the Penguins.  Anyone that tells you otherwise is either a dipshit asshole or a Leaves fan.  The Venn diagram of those two sets of people is nearly a single circle.  Sorry, but these are the facts.

In fact, the Pens registered 8 of their 17 first period shots in the first 4 minutes of the period and really came out guns blazing, showing the hockey world that Fred Andersen kinda sucks ass, much like actual danishes.  In fact, they may be the worst pastry, just like Fred Andersen was the worst goalie in this game!  Again, facts only here.

PIT – 1st Pd./11:42 – PPG – Malkin; A: Letang, Crosby – 1-0

But it wasn’t until a Toronto too many men penalty at the 11:36 mark that the Pens found their breakthrough.  Right off the draw, Letang took the Crosby-won faceoff and went right down low to Malkin drifting towards the net.  Before either team had a chance to even set up, Gene was throwing the puck from in close at Andersen, finding a hole in the Danish goaltender.

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When the Leafs started to show up in the last 5 or so minutes, it was the Matt Murray Show keeping the Pens ahead because he is good and also the best.

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Second Period

As the game transitioned into the 2nd period, the Leafs picked up right where they left off in the first, dominating the play for the first half of the period as they did the last 5 minutes of the first.  Unfortunately for them, Matt Murray picked right up where he left off, too.

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Then, with 11:39 to play in the 2nd, the Penguanos went to the PP after Hyman slew-footed Oleksiak after a long, painful shift from the Sprong/Simon duo (more of them later).  Nothing doing on the man-advantage, which got killed prematurely in the final trimester as Murr played the puck outside of the trapezoid.

The league’s top PP unit took the ice after 37 seconds of 4v4 time, but weren’t able to find twine behind Murr.  The Pens built off of it, tilting the ice back in their favor for the final 8 or so odd minutes.  They, too, weren’t able to find twine, sometimes by their own doing:

https://twitter.com/G_Off817/status/1053082577656004608

Third Period

To start the period, the Pens had more of the edge in play, but the Leafs had their own flurries when Crosby and Malkin weren’t on the ice.  Despite the Pens controlling more of the puck in the early stages, it was the Leaves controlling more of the scoring chances.  It was also Matt Murray continuing to play out of his mind, making save after save from in tight.

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Meanwhile, at the other end of the ice…

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PIT – 3rd Pd./17:53 – ENG – Kadri; A: Malkin – 2-0

But with about 3 minutes to play, Babcock pulled Andersen in favor of the extra attacker.  The Pens were demons in preventing Toronto from really even getting into the offensive zone with Evgeni Malkin leading the line, slowing up Marner initially as he tried to carry the puck out of his own zone after a Peng clearance, breaking the flow of them moving it north enough for Hagelin and Letang to force Kadri into pissing the puck away, eventually coming back to Malkin swooping in.

Geno did what he do to will the puck back out of the Pens zone before getting double teamed, ending with Kadri sweeping the puck away from 71, off Morgan Rielly, and into the Leaves’ net.

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PIT – 3rd Pd./18:52 – ENG – Letang; A: Malkin, Rust – 3-0

Under a minute later, with Andersen again removed from the net and after Murr had to make another big save, the ensuing faceoff set the stage for the dagger blow.  Down low in the trenches is exactly where the Pens were able to seal it with Crosby, Dumo, and Letang getting it done on Kadri, Tavares, and Co. before eventually Crosby was able to clean it all up and settle it down, hitting Rust in the slot to exit the zone.  Gene was there in support to blindly throw a pass across the neutral zone to Letang screaming up ice to net his 100th career goal.

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https://twitter.com/G_Off817/status/1053097943136460801

Game.

NOTES

• Matt Murray made 38 saves against the highest scoring team on the planet right now.  That seems good and you could probably say he was the Pens best player on the ice.
• The ones that would have given him a run for that best player title include Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.  Crosby still has yet to score this season, but that’s fine because he was dynamite last night.  He saw over 7 minutes of his 17:01 of 5v5 ice time against Auston Matthews and Crosby led 8-4 in shot attempts, 7-1 in unblocked shot attempts, and 5-0 in shots on goal (while also going 10-0, 8-0, and 5-0 respectively against the Hainsey-Rielly pairing, including 2-0 in scoring chances).  In a word, Auston Matthews was a non-factor.  Invisible, even!
• Malkin, on the other hand, had an even split against the Tavares line for the most part across the same board.  Geno himself at 5v5 had 3 shots on goal on 5 attempts, while individually generating 5 scoring chances (3 high danger).  Give him a goal and 2 assists for his efforts.
• This is maybe the best Letang has looked in his career. Coming into this game, Letang was tied for first on the team in 5v5 shots on goal with Jake Guentzel at 13. He led the team in attempted shots with 23, 18 of which have been unblocked (also a team high).  At all strengths, he also leads the team with 22 shots on goal.  Last night, Letang (joint) led the team with 9 shot attempts and (joint) led the team with 5 shots on goal.  He’s clearly shooting the puck a lot more and that’s certainly not a bad thing.
• One last thing – it may be time to have a talk about Daniel Sprong (or, in this case, Spraniel Dong).  Last night, both he and Dom Simon were stapled to the bench after being stuck on the ice for 2:01 after a long shift that had an icing or 8.  They got out of their predicament when Hyman slew-footed Oleksiak, so maybe a little bit of luck on their part.  Simon played 3 more shifts in the 2nd and none in the 3rd, while Sprong saw one more in the 2nd and one in the 3rd.  Neither player played more than 9 minutes in total, either.  We’ll be the first to tell you that young players need to be allowed to make and grow from mistakes, but it’s hard to justify that type of thinking in a 1-0 game where one of those mistakes can be the difference maker.  It’s also hard to justify allowing those mistakes to happen when no one else on the team discernibly made any glaring mistakes in such a tight game.  Benching them was the right call.
• To further that, Sprong, after a couple good days to open camp, has been totally underwhelming this whole last month, including preseason.  He’s shown flashes of good play.  That much is true, but per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice time this season among the 12 Penguins forwards, Sprong ranks last on the team in: shot attempts for, shot attempts against, shot attempts share, unblocked shot attempts for, unblocked shot attempts against, unblocked shot attempts share, shots on goal for share, scoring chances for, scoring chances for share, high danger chances against, and high danger chances share.  That’s not good.  Individually, he’s only registering 4.06 shots on goal per 60 minutes and attempting 8.11 shots per hour, both second worst.  His 4.06 unblocked shot attempts per hour is a team worst and his 1.35 team worst scoring chances for per hour is a full 3 chances per hour below 2nd worst, while he also is the only forward on the team to not have a single high danger scoring chance.  For being someone touted as a dynamic offensive player with a lethal shot, he’s just not using it or showing it and that’s not good enough.  Maybe he’d benefit from being moved up the lineup, but simply put, he has not done anything to earn a spot higher up in the lineup.

Pens get a couple of nights off over the weekend as the Canadian road trip continues in Edmonton on Tuesday night.  Go Pens.