Kris Letang was taking nothing for granted. Not while he watched as Sidney Crosby slid a pass onto his stick from the far side of the ice. Not even when he spotted an opening on the short side of Florida goalie Roberto Luongo’s net.
Luongo, Letang said, is too good of a goalie for him to have assumed anything.
But Letang did recognize the opportunity he had to secure the Penguins’ most improbable victory of the season. “I liked my chances,” he said, smiling.
Letang buried a shot behind Luongo from the bottom of the left circle at 1:27 of overtime to give the Penguins a 3-2 victory Saturday night at BB&T Center.
That goal capped a rally, orchestrated by Letang and Crosby, that saw the Penguins wipe out a two-goal deficit in the final six minutes of regulation before claiming the second point by capitalizing on a power play in overtime.
Letang kicked off the comeback from a 2-0 deficit at 14:56 of the third, when he beat Luongo from inside the left circle, and Crosby forced overtime when a Letang shot caromed off him and into the Florida net with 75 seconds remaining in regulation. Factor in their involvement in the game-winning goal, which came while former teammate Jussi Jokinen was serving a minor for hooking Letang, and both finished with three points.
Crosby’s first was his 900th in the NHL, and his goal extended his goal-scoring streak to six games, matching his career high. Heroics from the likes of Crosby and Letang aren’t unexpected, but the Penguins also got a strong effort from backup goalie Jeff Zatkoff. Sullivan opted to start him rather than Marc-Andre Fleury, who was coming off two consecutive subpar performances, and Zatkoff responded with 40 saves. Of course, there was a time when it looked like one save he failed to make could be the difference in the game.
Jokinen put a shot off Zatkoff and into the net from the bottom of the left circle at 6:03 of the second period to break a 0-0 tie. So was Florida’s second goal, although that one wasn’t Zatkoff’s fault. Florida’s Aleksander Barkov scored it on a Penguins power play at 9:15 of the third, the second short-handed goal the Penguins gave up in two nights.
The Penguins found a way, though, and scrambled into a tie with New Jersey for third place in the Metropolitan Division. They have won five of their past six games and have two games-in-hand on the Devils. The Panthers, meanwhile, had a five-game winning streak end, but remain in first place in the Atlantic Division. They controlled play for a significant amount of time, especially in the first half of the game, but couldn’t close out a team that was on the road and had played a night earlier.
Pens Quotes
Mike Sullivan: “Those two guys, I thought, put the team on their back. They raised their level at a critical time.”“Obviously, it gets that much harder when you give up that goal, and it deflates you a little bit when you give one up on the power play.”
Jeff Zatkoff: “I thought he was going to fling it short-side, high, so I wanted to try to get sealed against my post high and I just over-rotated and ended up putting it off my toe. Bad goal.”
Kris Letang: “We didn’t have that many good scoring chances, but we hung in there and we found a way. Any time you can stay around a one-goal game, you always have a chance. You never know what can happen.”
Other ResultsWashington @ New Jersey 3-2 SO
NY Rangers @ Philadelphia 3-2 SO
Edmonton @ Montreal 1-5
NY Islanders @ Detroit 1-5
Buffalo @ Boston 1-2 OT
Toronto @ Ottawa 1-6
Calgary @ Vancouver 4-1
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