In Anaheim, Tristan Jarry and Magnus Hellberg made a total of 32 saves as a tandem on Tuesday for a 2-0 win over the Ducks.
Jarry got the start for the Pens but left the game in the fist period after taking a puck to his unprotected face.
His mask had been dislodged after a collision near the crease with a Ducks skater.
“There’s always pressure on this level, whether you go in when your team is down a couple goals or whether it goes like this,” Hellberg (11 saves) said. “I just have to try and come up big for the team, and I thought they did a really good job in front of me communicating and letting me see the puck.”
The Pens took a 1-0 lead at 12:34 of the first on a strike by Radim Zohorna.
“We weren’t dictating a lot,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin said. “When we’re on our game, we’re hunting pucks and we’re getting some offensive-zone time. Give Pittsburgh credit, they played a good defensive game. They took a lot of our shooting lanes away to the net. They were tight on our points and closed gaps quickly.”
Anaheim dropped to 7-5-0.
Sidney Crosby added a later empty-net goal in the third for the 2-0 final.
“The main thing was that the first part wasn’t our best, but we didn’t beat ourselves.” Crosby said. “That’s what good teams do and, hopefully, we can build off this and keep going.”
The Pens improved to 5-6-0.
“What I loved about our third period is I just thought we competed hard,” Sullivan said. “I thought we defended well, we had numbers back and we were on the puck, made good decisions with the puck in the critical areas of the rink and we dug in.”
John Gibson made 34 saves in the loss.
You must be logged in to post a comment.