The Pittsburgh Penguins don't make it easy on themselves, but they never felt out of it against the Anaheim Ducks.
PITTSBURGH - It was a close call, but the Pittsburgh Penguins were able to walk away from their contest against the Anaheim Ducks with an important victory.
While it is a win for the Penguins on paper, taking a deeper looks shows a game that shouldn’t have been that close.
The Ducks stayed in the game by erasing a lead twice and taking one of their own late in the third period.
Despite the Ducks going up by a goal with under five minutes left to play, the Penguins never felt out of it.
“When they score with four and a half minutes to go in the game… in a lot of instances, that could really deflate a team,” Mike Sullivan said. “But I never sensed that on the bench.”
The players on the bench shared that feeling, they felt like all they had to do was get the next goal.
When asked what the mood on the bench was when the Ducks went ahead, Marcus Pettersson there was still a positive vibe.
“It was good, it was late and sometimes you can get deflated and say ‘here we go again,’” Pettersson said. “We didn’t let that sneak into the group. We stepped up right away.”
It was a close call, though, as the Penguins pulled Casey DeSmith for the extra attacker and it was Bryan Rust who took a feed from Jake Guetnzel for the game tying goal.
Rust was part of the many who thought there was no loss of hope within the team.
“They got a couple in the third,” Rust said. “Instead of getting on our heels and kind of deflating, we decided to dig in. It was a huge effort.”
A win for the Penguins was important, but had they fallen to a struggling Ducks team, it would have been fair to ask a few questions about this team.
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