Deja Vu for Penguins as Lead Slips Away in OT Loss to Tampa

Everything was going well for the Penguins in the first two periods against Tampa Bay on Tuesday at PPG Paints Arena.

They built a 2-0 lead at one end, and down at the other, Tristan Jarry was solid between the pipes. “He made some unbelievable saves,” Marcus Pettersson said of the netminder, who’s been working to rediscover his game after a tough start to the season.

But the Lightning pushed back in the final frame, and came away with a 3-2 overtime win. It’s Pittsburgh’s fifth defeat this season after leading by two-plus goals and the eighth loss overall when they have a lead of any kind.

“It just feels like the same crap all over again, you know? It’s frustrating,” Pettersson said. “We got to be a little bit more confident when we have the lead. We need to defend hard.”

“We're right where we want to be and we let it slip. That's not good enough,” Rickard Rakell said. “We like parts of our game but I think we've just got to get more comfortable and just put 60 minutes together. I think that's what it's going to take for us to get out of this.”

The first 20 minutes featured more strong play from Pittsburgh’s new-look third line of Jesse Puljujarvi, Drew O’Connor, and Sam Poulin. They’ve been outstanding since O’Connor moved to the middle to center those two on Friday in Columbus, with Puljujarvi getting his second goal in as many games after re-directing one heck of a backdoor pass from Pettersson.

“I think he’s playing really well for us,” head coach Mike Sullivan said of the 6-foot-4 winger. “He has the ability to make plays. He gets to the netfront. He's hard to handle because of how big he is. He's strong, and he's good on the wall. Those are the things that I think add up to him being an effective player for us.”

Jarry, making his first home start since returning from his conditioning stint in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, came up with some critical saves on Tampa Bay’s two power-play opportunities in the first period. He stopped all ten shots that he faced in the period.

“I thought I ended the game pretty well in Columbus. I was making some saves that I wanted to, and I think I just wanted to keep that momentum into tonight,” Jarry said. “The first period was strong. We had a good first period.”

Two minutes into the second period, Sidney Crosby came so close to scoring his 600^th career goal after getting a wide-open look at the top of the circle, teeing off a one-timer that clanked off the right post.

With just under seven minutes to go in the middle frame, Pittsburgh added to its lead on the man-advantage after Crosby made a quick one-touch pass from the bumper position to Rakell in the slot for his team-leading seventh goal of the season. Meanwhile, Jarry continued his steady play in the net.

But in the third period, Rakell said the Penguins let the Lightning have time and space. “For some reason, it seems like we're gripping our sticks a little bit too tight and giving them too many good looks,” he said. “They're a great team and eventually, they're going to score.”

Brayden Point’s first goal was an example of that, as he carried around the net and scored on a beautiful backhand wraparound. That came 5:41 in to cut Pittsburgh’s lead to one. Just under 13 minutes in, Anthony Cirelli’s centering attempt went off Jarry’s stick and bounced in, evening the score.

“If I don’t stop that from going through the middle, it goes through to the backdoor,” Jarry said. “So, that’s something that we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to block that seam from the backdoor. And I think it’s just fluky the way it goes off my stick and up in the air, and I couldn’t find it.”

Point then netted the overtime winner, leaving the Penguins once again trying to figure out how to keep this from happening.

“It’s frustrating. Certainly don’t want to just give in here. But we’ve got to find solutions to what’s going on out there,” Pettersson said. “Everybody knows two-goal leads aren’t easy. We’ve got to be on the right side more than we are right now.”