WHAT HAPPENED
After defeating Detroit 7-2 on Saturday, the Penguins fell to the Flyers 4-1 on Sunday to close out their last road trip of the regular season.
The Penguins have two games remaining, both at home - Tuesday versus Edmonton and Friday against Columbus. Sidney Crosby said that the focus going into those is just to get back to the way they had playing in the stretch prior to this afternoon's setback.
Penguins Not Good Enough in Philadelphia
"I think for probably four of the last five games, we've done some good things. So just make sure we're playing that way, giving ourselves a chance," the Penguins captain said. "These points are important. I think just more of what we saw from our games prior to today."
OVERALL ASSESSMENT
Martin Jones continued his revenge tour against the team that eliminated him and the San Jose Sharks in six games during the 2016 Stanley Cup Final. After entering today with two straight shutouts against the Penguins with his former club, he stopped 37 of 38 shots to earn another victory versus Pittsburgh.
Down at the other end, Louis Domingue played well between the pipes in his first NHL game action since Jan. 15 in San Jose. That night, he made 40 saves in Pittsburgh's 2-1 overtime win over the Sharks. The Penguins were extremely impressed with his performance, to the point where head coach Mike Sullivan said he probably would have gotten a few more games if he hadn't gotten hurt in a morning skate on Jan. 20.
But Domingue has done a good job of controlling the controllables and working towards staying ready for his opportunity, which he got in the second half of a back-to-back set. And he came up with a few Grade-A stops over the course of the game - like one that came in the second period.
The Penguins were about to break out, but Cates - who had himself a night - quickly regained possession and sent a quick pass to teammate Owen Tippett at the front of the net. He tried deking out Domingue, but the goaltender wasn't fooled and kicked out the pad to make the save.
Meanwhile, you couldn't really fault Domingue on the three goals the Flyers scored (the fourth came on an empty netter). Two came off deflections, and one came on a rebound after he made the initial stop.
"He made some big saves for us," Crosby said. "Unfortunately, we couldn't get enough going offensively. We had some good looks, but not enough to give him a boost and help him out. So it's up to us in front of him. But he did everything that he needed to do to give us a chance to win."
Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for the rest of the team. Sullivan said afterward that the Penguins just weren't good enough. The results showed that.
The Penguins trailed 1-0 after the first, 2-0 after the second, and went down 3-0 in the third before Crosby broke Jones' shutout bid with a late extra attacker goal. But the Flyers grabbed the three-goal lead right back with an empty-netter.
"I think it took us a bit to get going," Crosby said. "In the second, we had some really good chances. It's one-nothing and on those power plays, we got some good looks, and we didn't bury them. They end up eventually getting the third one.
"But when it was 1- and 2-nothing, I thought we generated enough to get back in the game, and unfortunately we didn't score. That wasn't our best, but sometimes it's not going to be your best, you still gotta find ways to win. We didn't do enough to do that today."
