How the Pittsburgh Penguins Can Win Game 2

Since the first playoff game, both the Penguins and Rangers have seen some potential lineup changes and decided which facets of their game they need to improve on. The second game of their series is tomorrow… so how can the Pens come out on top again?

It’s been a couple of days since the first game in the Pittsburgh Penguins – New York Rangers playoff series. Injuries have been evaluated on both sides, as have strategies for what they need to do better. The necessary vagueness of playoff press conferences means that the game tomorrow could be almost a mirror image of game one, or it could be vastly different.

Let’s get the daily injury report out of the way first. Evgeni Malkin has taken it upon himself to declare that he will be a gametime decision, while Marc-Andre Fleury will probably also be. He doesn’t have expectations one way or another, but he voiced his desire to get back in the net. Their progress is “very encouraging,” which is fantastic to hear.

(Side note – what a move by Mike Sullivan to trick literally everyone into thinking that Fleury would be starting game one while he planned to play Jeff Zatkoff all along. That’s some masterful media manipulation!)

Beau Bennett and Bryan Rust practiced today and are still day-to-day but are hopeful about their proximate return. Matt Murray is the only injured Penguin who wasn’t at team practice today.

On the Rangers front, they’ve got some fortunate news. Henrik Lundqvist, who left the first game after taking a stick to the eye, has no actual damage and is just waiting for the swelling to go down. Based on how he did in practice today, he may be in net tomorrow – but, like most of our hurt players, is a gametime decision.

Ryan McDonagh is obviously out again, with his longterm injury, but Dan Girardi will join him in the press box. Ostensibly he’s actually hurt, but when head coach Alain Vigneault was asked where he was injured he responded with, “It’s the whole thing.”

That sounds suspiciously like “he isn’t physically hurt, but his entire game is a disaster so we’re going to sit him until he can actually get it together” to me.

Girardi, of course, was one of the defensemen sprawling on the ice in the midst of Sidney Crosby‘s breakaway goal, completely botching his coverage and looking more like a failed figure skater than anything else. Let’s take another look at that, because it’s hilarious and I could watch nothing but this video for the rest of my life and be content:

Dylan McIlrath will be taking Girardi’s spot in the lineup and brings a lot of size and hitting power, if not too much else. That’s fine. The first game was chippy enough that the Penguins probably won’t be too bothered by his presence.

So now that that’s out of the way, what do the Penguins need to change in order to win tomorrow? Luckily, I don’t think there are too many issues: once they hit their stride in game one, they were on fire.

Of course, it took them nearly twenty minutes to get to that point. Slow starts are commonplace for the Penguins and they’ve learned to battle back successfully, but this is the playoffs. That isn’t going to fly if they want to make a long run.

Especially in this series, there’s a big likelihood they’ll hit a hot goalie whom they just can’t solve. If Lundqvist returns, he may not be on his top game; on the other hand, he may be even more determined to keep his team in the thick of it.