Sidney Crosby scores twice as Penguins snap Kraken's 9-game winning streak in 3-0 victory
Sidney Crosby scored twice, Tristan Jarry stopped 22 shots and the Pittsburgh Penguins ended the Seattle Kraken's franchise-record nine-game winning streak with a 3-0 victory on Monday.
Seattle, playing the fourth game of an East Coast road trip, mustered little against Pittsburgh as Jarry collected his fifth shutout of the season. Drew O'Connor also scored for the Penguins.
The Kraken came in riding a month of occasionally spectacular play that's vaulted them into the thick of the playoff chase in the loaded Western Conference as the season reaches its midpoint. Forced to go without three regulars in defenseman Vince Dunn, center Matty Beniers and forward Andre Burakovsky, Seattle mustered little against Jarry and a Pittsburgh team smarting after consecutive overtime losses to Vancouver and Carolina.
Both games required the Penguins to recover from an early deficit to pull even in the closing minutes, symptomatic of a club that has struggled to find its footing early in games of late.
Not so much in front of a somewhat impromptu matinee crowd. The Penguins and Kraken moved up the originally scheduled game time from 6 p.m. to 1 p.m. to avoid a direct conflict with the NFL playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Buffalo Bills. That game was moved from Sunday to Monday after a blizzard drilled Western New York over the weekend.
The Penguins controlled play for long stretches in the opening period and finally broke through early in the second during a pretty sequence that began with a stretch pass from Marcus Pettersson to Evgeni Malkin. Malkin then chipped the puck to a streaking Bryan Rust, who threaded a backhand pass to O'Connor that O'Connor fired by Joey Daccord 49 seconds into the second.
Crosby, sprinting up the NHL's all-time scoring list in the middle of his 19th season, collected his 575th a couple of minutes later when he went down to one knee in the right circle to blast a one-timer past Daccord 3:32 into the second. His 576th came on an empty netter in the final minutes.
The 36-year-old Crosby is now one goal shy of tying Hall of Famer Mark Recchi for 21st on the all-time list. At Crosby's current pace, he could pass Recchi in relatively short order and maybe even catch Jari Kurri in 20th at 601 before the end of the season.
Seattle had trailed for all of 56:50 during its nine-game run, more than half of that coming in an overtime victory over Philadelphia on Dec. 29.
There would be no rally this time, as a roster littered with former Penguins — including two-time Stanley Cup winner Brian Dumoulin, who left in free agency for Seattle last summer — found little open space against a team that is now 10-3-3 over its last 16 games.
UP NEXT
Kraken: Visit the New York Rangers on Tuesday.
Penguins: Head west for a two-game road trip starting in Las Vegas on Saturday.
