Penguins done in by penalties, Point's hat trick in loss to Lightning
When the Pittsburgh Penguins found out captain Sidney Crosby would miss about a week with an upper-body injury, they knew they were coming into Thursday night’s game short-handed.
Once the puck dropped, that condition only got worse.
The Penguins took nine minor penalties, went on the penalty kill seven times and gave up four power-play goals, losing 4-3 to the Tampa Bay Lightning at PPG Paints Arena.
After the Penguins were called for three penalties in a 10-second span of the final minute of the first period, Brayden Point scored three power-play goals in 91 seconds. It was the sixth-fastest hat trick in NHL history.
The Penguins have lost seven of their last eight games. They fell to 7-7-3 and are tied with New Jersey and Florida for the worst record in the Eastern Conference.
“When you’re squeezing it as tight as we are right now and trying to get out of a bit of a hole, you can’t afford to be down short-handed like that,” center Matt Cullen said.
During their long stretch of misery, the Penguins have found a variety of ways to lose games. There have been nights when the effort was lacking, nights when decision making with the puck was poor, nights when players and coaches alike threw up their hands in frustration, failing to understand what had gone wrong.
This wasn’t one of those nights.
This game was lost when a team with a 2-0 lead in the final minute of the first period took two penalties on the same play — a hook by Evgeni Malkin and a slash by Phil Kessel — and followed that with a tripping call by Cullen 10 seconds later.
“Geno, he tries to play a puck, stick goes in the skate a little bit,” defenseman Kris Letang said. “They were penalties. It’s not that they were bad calls. It just seems that they happened so quick, and we gave them the game right there.”
Tampa Bay actually ran into penalty trouble before the Penguins did, going short-handed three times in the first 15 minutes of the game.
The Penguins made them pay twice. First, Patric Hornqvist tipped in a Kessel shot. Then, Kessel hit paydirt from the top of the right hash marks off a feed from Malkin.
“When you get a couple power-play goals early in the game, you know they’re probably looking to get you,” Cullen said. “We made it really easy for them to put us in the box.”
The three-penalty spree by Malkin, Kessel and Cullen gave Point his hat trick and the Lightning a 3-2 lead.
Point came off the left half-wall and rang a shot in off the post. He scored on a one-timer into an empty cage from the bottom of the left circle. He scored on a quick-trigger shot from the right hash marks off a feed from J.T. Miller from behind the net.
The Penguins recovered from Point’s barrage to forge a 3-3 tie about three minutes later when Hornqvist and Malkin created a turnover and a scoring chance on the forecheck.
Another Penguins penalty and another Lightning power-play goal soon followed, this time on an unscreened Yanni Gourde one-timer on Matt Murray from the top of the right circle.
Under different circumstances, they could chalk this one up as a night where the calls didn’t go their way.
Given where they are in the standings, though, results are all that matter at the moment.
“We’ve got to find a way to get through it, and we didn’t get it done,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “We’ve got to be better.”
Jonathan Bombulie is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jonathan at jbombulie@tribweb.com or via Twitter @BombulieTrib.
