Sign up for one of our email newsletters.
Updated 10 hours ago
Patric Hornqvist was back in his old neighborhood on the Penguins lineup card Tuesday night.
He didn't need a GPS to get around. Knew all the shortcuts. Saw a lot of faces he recognized.
He had a nice time. He might stay for a while.
Reunited on a line with Sidney Crosby and Conor Sheary, Hornqvist scored a pair of second-period goals as the Penguins beat the Nashville Predators, 4-2.
Trevor Daley and Chris Kunitz also scored for the Penguins, who broke a two-game losing streak and improved to 21-3-2 at home this season.
“I got lucky there in front to find two pucks,” Hornqvist said. “Some nights (you're finding) them. Some nights you're not. Overall, second and third period, I thought we played a really good game, really solid. We didn't give them the turnovers they wanted in the neutral zone.”
With Evgeni Malkin out with a lower-body injury, the Penguins were forced to shuffle their top lines the last two games. Coach Mike Sullivan used the opportunity to take Bryan Rust off the right wing with Crosby and Sheary and replace him with Hornqvist.
With Rust, the line fizzled a bit in the previous four games. With Hornqvist, it found some familiar chemistry.
“Going back to last playoffs, I think we played really well together,” Hornqvist said. “We know exactly where we are on the ice. I think we showed that tonight. We got some really good looks.”
While breaking in new lines and coming off a three-day All-Star break, the Penguins didn't look particularly dangerous in the first period. They played Nashville to a territorial standstill but fell behind 1-0 on a Calle Jarnkrok goal.
The fourth line, which has seen the least amount of juggling the last two games, scored late in the first when Scott Wilson tipped an Ian Cole point shot off Jarnkrok's skate to Kunitz for a shot from the slot.
Early Liderbahis in the second period, third-line winger Carl Hagelin, working on the right boards to move the puck through the neutral zone, found a streaking Trevor Daley in the middle of the ice. Daley flew in scored his fifth slap-shot goal of the season to give the Penguins the lead for good.
At the game's midpoint, Sullivan liked what he was seeing.
The coach wanted his team to be harder to play against coming out of the break, and he was getting his wish. The Penguins led 22-12 in shots and 42-28 in shot attempts.
“That's the type of game we have to bring more consistently,” Sullivan said. “I know this team is going to score. We've talked to our group and challenged our group about being more of a playoff-type team, having that identity where we're hard to play against.
“I think we made a step in the right direction, but I know we have another level.”
Nashville tried to make a charge in the second half of the second period, and by the end of the game, it had evened the balance of shots and shot attempts.
It didn't matter because of Hornqvist's night.
Off an offensive-zone faceoff with about nine minutes left in the second, Hornqvist took a pass from Crosby behind the net and stuffed a wraparound shot under goalie Pekka Rinne's right skate.
About five minutes later, Hornqvist struck on the power play. A deflected Nick Bonino shot from the slot bounced to Hornqvist near the right post, and he flipped a shot past Rinne's glove to give the Penguins a 4-1 lead.
“Horny had a great game. He does what he does. He's a north-south guy,” Sullivan said. “Regardless of what line we put him on, or we put him on the power play, he just does what he does for us.”
Jonathan Bombulie is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at jbombulie@tribweb.com or via Twitter at @BombulieTrib.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.