Overtime Takeover: Penguins Nip Islanders, 4-3
Roughly a third of the way through the season, I’m still not sure if our Penguins are a playoff team, let alone a Stanley Cup contender.
There are holes galore. The fourth line is virtually non-existent. The “Two-Headed Monster” ain’t what it used to be. Our ‘d’ touches nary a soul. We could desperately use in no particular order a scoring winger, a net-front presence and some good old-fashioned muscle.
Yet for all of our apparent flaws, this bunch possesses an indefinable something. Call it resilience. Call it character. Call it heart. With few exceptions, when the chips are down we respond. Just we did last night when we chased down the Islanders at rickety old Nassau County Coliseum to register a 4-3 overtime victory.
It was the Pens’ sixth victory when trailing going into the third period. Pretty remarkable stuff from an otherwise unremarkable team.
Typical of our never-do-things-the-easy-way approach, we totally squandered two early power plays. Shorty thereafter, the Isles cashed in on their lone man-advantage of the night. I’ll give you three guesses as to how it happened. If you said burly Brock Nelson was granted free-and-clear access to the front of the net to score on a deflection, you’d be correct.