The group gathered at the bench around assistant coach Todd Reirden, who took out a whiteboard to diagram something for the players before they dispersed to line up for an offensive-zone faceoff with 58 seconds remaining to work with.
Sidney Crosby won it back, and Jake Guentzel made sure the puck got to Kris Letang at the blue line. The defenseman brought it to the center point before sending it back over to Bryan Rust at the half wall.
Rust fired a pass to Crosby stationed below the goal line in the left trapezoid; he slid it over to Malkin at the right trapezoid; and Letang finished it off by burying a one-timer.
"We executed, and it went perfectly," Letang said.
That tied the score at 3-3, forcing overtime and allowing the Penguins to come away with a hard-fought point in an eventual shootout loss.
"Pretty much what you saw is what we drew up," Rust said. "It's nice when we can execute like that, especially in a big moment like that where we're down a goal and need a little bit of life."
Everyone on the bench certainly got plenty of life from that goal, but perhaps no one more so than one of the men behind it, as Reirden's celebration was priceless. What made it even better was defenseman Mike Matheson immediately turning around to excitedly congratulate him.
"I think he does a terrific job with our power play," head coach Mike Sullivan said. "They're always very well prepared, and they've got a number of different looks off the faceoffs that they run. I thought it was a great look tonight. Obviously, it was a huge goal for us."
Overall, this game was a struggle for the Penguins, who just didn't have their best in the second half of a back-to-back. But something to hang their hat on is the power play rediscovering its "mojo," to steal a term from Sullivan.
They had also been struggling a bit as of late, and getting back on track had been a focus coming out of Pittsburgh's recent six-day road trip, as the Penguins had gone 0-for-14 during those three games in Nashville, St. Louis and Arizona. Going back a little further, the power play had converted one time in 20 tries.
"I think the puck will eventually go in for them if they continue to get the looks," Sullivan said on Saturday. "They just got to stay with it. And I think when they get that, they get a certain swagger. It's pretty easy to recognize when they have that swagger. I just think they've lost a little bit of it, but I think they'll get it back as fast as they lost it."
That has certainly turned out to be the case. They have now scored in two straight games, with Malkin getting on the board last night before Crosby made it 1-1 just 26 seconds into the second period tonight. The Penguins ended up going a perfect 2-for-2 in this evening's contest with Letang's third-period tally.
"We're not going to be at our best every single night," Matheson said. "To find ways to score big goals and stay in games and give ourselves a chance to win on nights that we're not feeling it is really important, especially going down into the rest of the season and into the playoffs too. So I think that's one positive to take out of it."
