Lightning at Penguins
The red-hot Pittsburgh Penguins play their first game in eight days and hope the extra rest didn't leave any rust when they host the stumbling Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday. The Penguins went 12-1-2 in December, capped by a 4-3 overtime triumph over Montreal on the final day of the month, and take a four-game winning streak into the 2017 portion of the season.
“These guys are such well-conditioned athletes, when they take time off, five days seems like an eternity,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan told reporters. “We tried to handle it in a way – and certainly encouraged our players to handle it in a way – that we hope will give us a competitive advantage, if we take care of ourselves and do things the right way.” The Lightning could be just the right opponent after the break, as they don’t resemble the team that took the Penguins to Game 7 of the 2016 Eastern Conference finals at all right now. Injury-plagued Tampa Bay has lost three straight while giving up a total of 16 goals after a 4-2 setback in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon. “There were turnovers and lost battles pretty much all (game),” Lightning coach Jon Cooper told reporters. “When you’re going to do that, you don’t really have much chance of winning.”
TV: 5 p.m. ET, NHL Network, Sportsnet 360, FSN Sun (Tampa Bay), ROOT (Pittsburgh)
ABOUT THE LIGHTNING (19-18-4): Tampa Bay was missing five regulars Saturday after veteran defenseman Braydon Coburn (upper body) was injured in Thursday’s contest, and general manager Steve Yzerman is working the phones in a cold trade market. “If there was something I could have done to this point that would make our team better, I would have done it,” Yzerman told the Tampa Bay Times. “We’ll keep trying.” The top two goal scorers – Nikita Kucherov (16) and Alex Killorn (13) – each tallied in Saturday’s loss while Andrei Vasilevskiy made 40 saves.
ABOUT THE PENGUINS (25-8-5): The top three scorers on the team all enjoyed strong months of December as captain Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel combined for 25 goals. Malkin leads the team with 43 points, including 26 in his last 18 contests, while Crosby is next with 42 – with 26 coming in his last 19 games. Marc-Andre Fleury, who is probable despite missing Friday’s practice with an illness, was named the NHL's Third Star of the Week before Pittsburgh’s break and has allowed a total of six goals in four consecutive victories.
OVERTIME
1. Pittsburgh rallied from a two-goal deficit and tallied three times on the power play to post a 4-3 win at Tampa Bay on Dec. 10.
2. Tampa Bay RW J.T. Brown (upper body) left Saturday’s game in the third period after absorbing a shot to the head from Philadelphia's Wayne Simmonds.
3. The Penguins will honor their 2009 Stanley Cup championship team in a ceremony before Sunday’s game.