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Updated 16 hours ago
At the end of his first shift of the game, after his breakaway attempt was knocked away by the left arm of goalie Petr Mrazek, Phil Kessel returned to the bench and shook his head in disgust so vigorously it looked like he was in danger of suffering a neck injury.
It was that kind of afternoon for the Penguins.
Steve Ott scored a tiebreaking goal in the second period, and Mrazek made it stand up, leading the Detroit Red Wings to a 5-2 victory at PPG Paints Arena.
The loss snapped a nine-game regulation unbeaten streak for the Penguins, who missed a chance to move within three points of first-place Washington in the Metropolitan Division standings.
The win pulled the Red Wings out of last place in the Eastern Conference.
“I think we've just got to execute. It comes down to that,” captain Sidney Crosby said. “We didn't do a good job of executing five-on-five or on our power play. They were a little more desperate, it seemed like, with the way they played.”
Kessel wasn't the only Penguins player shaking his head after this one. Starting with a first period that included incessant whistles and 36 faceoffs, it was a game that couldn't have been any fun to play.
The Penguins weren't outshot, outchanced or outpossessed in any significant way, but they fell behind 2-1 anyway because Detroit did a much better job of capitalizing on mistakes.
Midway through the first, just as Detroit picked off an Evgeni Malkin pass at the offensive blue line, the defenseman who would have been in position to clean up the mess, Cameron Gaunce, lost his footing. It led to a breakaway goal for defenseman Nick Jensen.
Later, Riley Sheahan intercepted a Letang pass and centered to Ott in the high slot for a backhand goal.
“A couple of the goals that they got, they didn't have to work hard enough for,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “When our team is at its best, we certainly make it hard on our opponents to generate scoring chances and/or goals.”
The first three minutes of the third period brought more of the same.
Less than 30 seconds in, a Jake Guentzel turnover in the defensive zone led to a Tomas Tatar goal. About two minutes later, Thomas Vanek picked up a wayward pass in the neutral zone and scored from the high slot to make it 4-1.
“Both those saves, I probably need to make those saves as well,” goalie Matt Murray said. “We definitely can't afford to get scored on early in the third like that.”
The Penguins got a short-handed goal from Tom Kuhnhackl in the first period and one from Crosby seven seconds after Vanek scored in the third, but those moments were rare compared to the times they saw good scoring chances swallowed up by Mrazek.
The power play was especially impotent, managing three shots on four chances.
“It was a microcosm of our whole game,” Sullivan said. “The game was a struggle, and the power play struggled as a result. When we go through that process, we talked about simplifying the game and trying to establish a shot and see if we couldn't generate some offense off of a rebound. That's what I saw. I thought it was a microcosm of our overall game.”
If that wasn't irritating enough, the Penguins also had to deal with Detroit's pesky physicality. In the first period, Ott crunched Letang with a late hit into the boards just before scoring his goal. In the second, Crosby got into a slashing match with Anthony Mantha.
“That's not an excuse. That should have nothing to do with your mindset,” Murray said. “You just play. Maybe we let that get the best of us tonight. That really shouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things.”
Jonathan Bombulie is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at jbombulie@tribweb.com or via Twitter at @BombulieTrib.
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