After only playing in two games the last 11 days because of the 2025 NHL Global Series in Stockholm, Sweden, the Penguins were unable to keep up with the Minnesota Wild on Friday night, who earned a 5-0 victory.
“I'm sure we can find a thousand excuses. I don't think we should have any, though,” Erik Karlsson said on whether the extended break had an impact on the game. “We've had a couple of good days. Everybody's feeling good. It just wasn't our night. We didn't start the game the way that we wanted to, and today we couldn't find a way to dig ourselves out of it. And very unfortunate outcome, but unfortunately, we deserved it tonight.”
The Wild have been on a tear since losing to Pittsburgh back on Oct. 30, improving to 8-1-1.
“There’s a lot of skill there, not just up front, but on their back end,” Muse said before the game. “They have defensemen who can be very active and get up in the play. Defensively, they’re not giving a lot of time and space, and they have a group that’s pretty good in transition as well.”
The Wild went out to an early 3-0 lead with goals from Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson Ek, and Marcus Johansson, and outshot the Penguins 9-3 in the opening period.
“Obviously, it wasn't our best effort right from the start. We ended up on the wrong foot early in the first, and we couldn't find a way to get ourselves out of it,” Karlsson said. “I think everybody in here understands that tonight wasn't good enough to have a chance to win a hockey game, and we know that the only positive is that we don't have much time to dwell on it.”
Goaltender Arturs Silovs, who came into Friday’s game with the fifth-best save percentage in the league at .917% (min. 7GP), started the game for the Penguins. Kirill Kaprizov made it 4-0 early in the second period, and rookie goaltender Sergei Murashov came in to stop 10 out of 11 shots in relief.
The Penguins will look to put this game in the rear-view mirror and gear up for Saturday’s matchup against the Seattle Kraken at PPG Paints Arena.
“In less than 24 hours, we get the chance to go at it again,” Ryan Shea said. “I know for me, that's definitely a positive, because you can actually go to sleep knowing that you got to bring your best game tomorrow. And that's what we're going to do, and that's what I'm going to do.”
More from Muse:
Were you more concerned tonight by the lack of execution from your team or just the overall lack of effort and body language that we saw tonight?: It was a bit of everything tonight. I think it wasn't just one of those, it was a combination. Everything that could’ve been off was.
No one in the locker room was looking to make excuses, but how much of tonight might’ve been a byproduct of the trip and the readjustment there?: I'm not looking at that. We had practices, we obviously weren't ready, and I'm not looking at that as an excuse at all, not for a second.
In general, this season the team has done a good job of bouncing back when something like that has happened. Do you expect to see that tomorrow night?: Yeah, we have to. We’re fortunate that we get to play again tomorrow night after a game like that. There are a lot of things that have to get cleaned up, but we have to.
What was your assessment of Silovs tonight?: Even the goals and the chances that we let up, it shouldn’t have happened. Sometimes, too, you’re looking to make a change because things aren’t going and you need something that will hopefully give a little bit of a spark, and we made the change. Artie has been really strong for us throughout the course of the year. It’s unfortunate that we go into the first period and we gave up the type of quality against that we did. I think it was something going back, it was everybody, everybody's included on a loss like that. I think it's across the board, myself included. There was a lot of bad tonight, and I think it wasn't just one thing or one person, by any means.
With the tip goals in front of the net, was it exemplary play by them, or something that the team needs to do better: You’ve got to eliminate those sticks. Credit to them. I don't think there were a lot of surprises in terms of what they were doing. They executed. They were at the net front. They made the plays that were available, but we need to cover those better than we did, for sure.
