At one point, things looked grim for the Pittsburgh Penguins, down 3-0 to the Philadelphia Flyers at PPG Paints Arena. Moreover, it had been a mere 48 hours since the visitors thumped the home team 6-1.
However, once Mike Sullivan pulled the Alex Nedeljkovic, the embarrassed Penguins woke up and rallied from a 3-0 and 4-2 deficits to skate away with a triumphant 5-4 overtime victory thanks to Evgeni Malkin.
Let’s discuss one of the most thrilling comebacks of the 2024-25 season.
As mentioned, Malkin was the overtime hero and led the Penguins with two goals and four points. It was a vintage performance by a future Hall of Famer.
Meanwhile, once Pittsburgh swapped goalies, the pressure was on rookie Joel Blomqvist to salvage the situation. He made 22 saves for a .957 SV% in 33 minutes. Down 3-0, it was his job to stop the bleeding, and he did an outstanding job.
Even though veterans have been leading the charge all season, it’s been a while since Malkin had a dominant game. He finally broke out commandingly on Thursday night, getting the Penguins two valuable points in the standings.
Although Nedeljkovic will not be part of the game’s outcome, as the Penguins rallied while he was on the bench, his reaction to getting pulled will be on the highlight reels for the remainder of the season.
After giving up his third goal, Sullivan signaled for the change, and Nedeljkovic lost it. Despite how funny or painful it looked on national TV, it was raw. Here’s a guy who’s done everything possible to keep his team in every game with little to no support.
Getting pulled is more a reflection on a netminder than the team, so no one can blame Nedeljkovic for flipping out; none of the goals on Thursday were his fault.
Of course, the Penguins have one of the worst goal against averages in the NHL, but sometimes it’s not just on the goalies. Thankfully, the team realized the error of their ways and bounced back.
There are now only 19 games left to make a push for the playoffs, which are nine points and seven teams away. Defeating the Flyers in one of the season’s most intense games was fun, but won’t mask the team’s shortcomings.
It was a great rally for a team that has a pattern of showing up for lengthy stretches of games, but then one miscue ended up in the back of the net, and they crumbled like a house of cards.
Besides the milestone games for Malkin and Sidney Crosby, Thursday night will be one of the best comebacks this season. Optimistically, the win could propel the Penguins to run the table over the season’s final month like last season and get close to a wildcard spot.
However, in a best case scenario, they wind out short and miss out on a top draft pick. There’s just been too many bad performances to recover from this late into the campaign.
