Penguins/NHL
The Pittsburgh Penguins season came to a heartbreaking end Wednesday night as Cam York’s Overtime winner with 2:28 left in OT delivered a 1-0 Flyers win and Philadelphia punched their ticket to a second-round matchup against the Carolina Hurricanes. The York OT winner on a shot from the point through traffic came moments after a miraculous save from Arturs Silovs which only added fuel to it being a gut-wrenching loss for the Penguins who were the far superior team tonight.
This Penguins team in the past three games battled in every way imaginable; They showed heart, they got out of the world goaltending from Arturs Silovs and over the last two games they flipped the series in dictating the terms and style of play. As overtime was dragging on, all you had to do was read the body language on the ice. The Flyers were losing a hold of the series and it just felt like they had to find a way to win this game. If Pittsburgh who peppered Dan Vladar with 42 shots, could get one past Vladar, the Penguins on Saturday Night were going to become the 5th team ever to come back from 3-0.
Instead, tonight also showed why teams coming back from being down 3-0 only have a 2% success rate. It’s so daunting to actually pull off.
“Shot away from going back to Pittsburgh for Game 7,” Sidney Crosby afterwards. “Think we all had a lot of belief.”
The series for Pittsburgh was obviously lost in the hole they put themselves in. As well as the Penguins adjusted in a number of areas, especially in games five and six, Pittsburgh will have a long summer of second-guessing why they were caught so off-guard to start the series with certain aspects of the Flyers system and got steamrolled in head-to-head matchups in games 1 and 2 despite having home-ice.
“Unfortunate we got behind in the series,” Crosby said.
For Pittsburgh it’s a major off-season of uncertainty:
They’re amped with a ton of cap space and draft picks to be aggressive and bold, while still playing the future long-term route. But,they also have major ownership questions with the Hoffmann group set to take majority control as a belief around the league is the Penguins will be closer to a cap floor team moving forward than a cap team due to a lack of cash-on-hand from the group.
One of the first cases of business will be a final decision from management on Evgeni Malkin. Neither side wants to play this out into late June like 2022, sources say. Malkin’s camp proposed a one year, $To read this insider news, subscribe to get “Inside Access”! contract extension in February that Pittsburgh’s front office was not interesting in discussing at the time. Management has been lean moving on from Malkin since last summer, though, ownership’s recommendation has been to To read this insider news, subscribe to get “Inside Access”!
Game 5 What We Learned: Penguins turning the pressure on Flyers with strength’s starting to reappear