“Opportunity” – as an idea and a language – is great for Mike Sullivan.
Whether he is directing a roster of future Hall of Fame members or stars for a regular midweek season contest or Game 7 of a series of playoffs, he sees that game as an opportunity.
So, even if the Pittsburgh Penguins coach was forced to deploy two lines full of misfit attackers who were either dismissed or spent some time in Wilkes-Barre / Scranton this season, there was only one way for him to describe Saturday’s clash with the New Yorkers, a team they’re chasing in the East Division.
“Every night is an opportunity,” Sullivan preached on a videoconference after the morning skate. “Each game is an opportunity to establish ourselves in a playoff position and that is how we should look at things. This is a great game, this is an important game.
“But every night, regardless of who your opponent is, is an opportunity for us.”
The Penguins made the most of this opportunity. Scoring five goals in their first 11 shots, they beat the Islanders 6-3 at the PPG Paints Arena.
The win gave the Penguins 46 points, two less than runner-up Islanders.
This tabulation was not forgotten by the Penguins after the game.
“It’s a team that we look for in qualifying,” said striker Bryan Rust, who scored the Penguins’ first hat-trick of the season. “It’s a team that plays hard defensively, plays hard on the ice. We knew it wouldn’t be easy. ”
It certainly looked easy at first, as the Penguins took a 1-0 lead in the 5th minute and 48 seconds into regulation. After a two-on-one run, Penguins striker Sam Lafferty made a pass from the left circle to striker Frederick Gaudreau’s position, who raised a wrister for his first goal as a team member.
They got a 2-0 lead at 10:07 in the first period. After a pass above the left circle, striker Evan Rodrigues hit a wrister’s knuckler passing goalkeeper Ilya Sorokin’s block on the near side for his fourth goal of the season.
Consecutive power-play goals in the second period gave the team a 4-0 advantage.
First, 4:26 in the middle of the frame, striker Sidney Crosby scored his 14th goal with a backhander in the mouth of the goal.
This was followed by Rust scoring his 12th, less than two minutes later, at the 6:18 mark. With a few accurate passes, Rust ripped a wrister out of the slit in Sorokin’s legs.
Sorokin was pulled in favor of Semyon Varlamov, but that did little to stop the Penguins – or Rust, who scored with equal force about two minutes later, at 8:21.
After Varlamov denied defender Kris Letang’s one-timer from the right spot, Rust wiped the rebound over the fold with a backhander.
The Islanders made the game competitive with three consecutive goals.
First, striker Mathew Barzal opened the scoring with a nice check from the left wing and attacked the net, scoring the 10th goal with a wrister.
Goals from the Islanders ‘strikers’ third period, Anthony Beauvillier – his sixth in a 5:23 mark rebound – and Jordan Eberle, in a four-to-four streak at 17:33, made the game two goals.
Rust completed his hat-trick and secured the victory at 19:18 of the third goal with an empty net goal.
Tristan Jarry made 29 saves in 32 shots, while the Penguins took the opportunity to close the gap between them and the islanders.
“It was a very big victory for us because, obviously, we are chasing them in qualifying,” said Lafferty. “They are a very good team. They play the hard game. They defend themselves a lot. You don’t have a lot of strikes from strangers against them. We know that every game against the Islanders will be a battle. ”
Seth Rorabaugh is a staff writer for the Tribune-Review. You can contact Seth by email at [email protected] or via Twitter .
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