Pennsylvania Finishes the 2 -Game Sweep

Apr 9, 2026; Newark, New Jersey, USA; Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin (71) celebrates goal against the New Jersey Devils during the third period at Prudential Center. Mandatory Credit: Luther Schlaifer-Imagn Images | Luther Schlaifer-Imagn Images

As we play out the string here after being eliminated on Tuesday, the best you can hope for is to see a little pride in the Devils game. Or if you are team tank, you’re gleefully tapping your fingers like Mr. Burns and saying “excellent.”

1st Period

I was a little surprised to see the Devils come out of the gates as hot as they did, taking an early 6-0 shot advantage highlighted by Timo Meier post on a breakaway. Unfortunately, they would do what they do best, and have a brutal defensive zone break down and give up the first goal on the first Penguin shot. Nemec got absolutely lost, and no one was covering Rust on a cross slot pass, and one more time for old time’s sake it’s 1-0 them. From then on the Devils got absolutely buried the rest of the period, getting outshot 15-10 (14-4 after the Penguins goal) and 60/40 splits on every other metric.

The Devils got a relatively inconsequential powerplay where not much happened – I only bring it up to note that Nemec got the QB nod over Dougie on PP1.

2nd Period

The reverse happened ii the second, where Pittsburgh kept their momentum, starting the period on the front foot for the first 10 minutes. Dougie hit Cotter for a breakaway on an alley oop pass out of the zone, and Cotter doesn’t miss on breakaways – tying it up 1-1 at 9:51.

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The tie was short lived, as the Penguins broke through less than two minutes later on a 3-on-2, Karlsson flipped a nice pass through Cholowski to Malkin who dropped it off to Novak who buried it high.

Off the ensuing faceoff, Dougie pushed up but lost track of Chinakov sneaking around behind him, who got sent in on a partial breakaway – and just a short 9 seconds after they made it 2-1, it was 3-1.

Jack would get us back within 1 goal at 15:07, on a nice O-zone play where Siegs hit him high in the zone, he was able to walk down Broadway and let one go from the high slot that tipped of Wotherspoon for his 26th of the season. He is now tied for the team lead, which is probably not a great look for the team considering he completely missed 1 month and had one hand for 2 more.

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This period was a little more evenly split 50/50, with the Penguins generating the more dangerous looks. Allen made a few really high end saves, including a beauty on a Novak one-timer through a screen.

3rd Period

The Penguins would extend their lead to 4-2 on another broken defensive zone breakdown, with Crosby sliding across the crease uncontested, and making a move to his backhand. He found himself behind the goal line, banked it off Allen and Malkin slipped in behind him to tap it in. There was just so so much that went wrong on this one, what a mess.

The dagger came at 17:00 minutes with Allen pulled. Nico got worked on the faceoff, it came around behind the net and Karlsson hit the ENG from distance.

Overall they generated less than 2 xG, with offensive splits at a roughly 60/40 clip across shots, attempts and chances. They had 11 shots overt the final two periods on only 27 attempts.

5-2 final, see ya Sunday.

Some Scattered Thoughts

This season has been death by a thousand cuts (pun intended), but one of the most glaring issues has been their play against the Metro. They are 7-17-2 including sweeps at the hands of Carolina, NYI and Philly and 1-3 against Pittsburgh. That is a .317 winning percentage/52 point pace. Against the rest of the league? A 104 point pace and .634 winning pct.

Not sure why Edwards or Vilen didn’t get a look over Cholowski – might as well play some kids? Any other volunteers want to shut it down like Luke?

I was a big believer in Brad Shaw, but I am starting to think we might have been sold a bill of goods here. The D-zone coverage is a disaster, pretty much every defenseman has regressed, Nemec hasn’t grown at all and Luke stagnated. I realize that is on the players too, but I have not been impressed at any time this season.

Credit to the Penguins, a team that was the only one that was going into the season as sellers (according to insiders) and here they are, comfortably 2nd in the division. If you read my blog about replacing Keefe, I’d like to take a look at someone like a Dan Muse – a young fresh coach with fresh ideas on how to generate better offensive looks. Ours just feels so stale. We’ll probably get more into these things in our season obit.

Remember when we were scoring 5-6 a game in March? That was fun.

Really appreciate all you troopers (sickos?) who still come to the blog day in and day out!

Sound off below!

LGD