This was, Mike Sullivan said, just one of those nights for his team. The kind that is inevitable every now and then during a season that sprawls across six months. The kind that almost always end in a disappointing defeat.
Almost always.
Not this time, though.
In part, at least, because Tristan Jarry wouldn't let it. Starting consecutive games for the first time in 2019-20, he made 32 saves in the Penguins' 3-2 overtime victory against the Flames at PPG Paints Arena Monday evening.
His performance was not enough to earn him recognition as one of the game's three stars, but it certainly garnered the attention -- and appreciation -- of his teammates.
"He's playing very good right now," Dominik Kahun said. "We have two great goaltenders right now, and that's very important."
Jarry's final stop might have been his most important, because it came a half-minute or so before Jake Guentzel scored the game-winner for the Penguins.
That save came on a breakaway by Johnny Gaudreau who, had the Penguins been forced to choose the Calgary forward they would least want to have break in alone on Jarry with a chance to win the game, would have been a popular selection.
Maybe a unanimous one.
"That's one of the last guys (you want to see with a breakaway)," Guentzel said. "Just his skill set and his hands, he's deadly out there."
Even though his scoring touch has deserted him at times this season -- Gaudreau has five goals in 27 games -- he is an exceptional offensive talent. His modest size (5 foot 9, 165 pounds) can be an issue at times, but isn't much of a factor when the nearest defender might as well be in another time zone, as was the case on his breakaway.
Mind you, such things happen occasionally during overtime, when each side has just three skaters and the open ice can be measured in acres.
"You're not really expecting a breakaway to happen, but it does happen, just from fewer guys being on the ice and there's a lot more space," Jarry said.
Fortunately for the Penguins, as Gaudreau went to the net, the puck acted like he was stickhandling on a back-country dirt road. He was credited with a shot on goal, but it wasn't nearly as dangerous as it might have been:
"Thankfully, the ice was not that great, so he fumbled it," Kris Letang said.
Guentzel, conversely, had no such difficulty when his chance came at 4:04 of the extra period, as he threw a wrist shot past Flames goalie David Rittich from the top of the left circle for his third game-winner of the season:
Perhaps because Guentzel goals are so common -- that one was his 12th of 2019-20 -- he didn't get much attention in the locker room after the game.
Instead, reporters swarmed Alex Galchenyuk, who scored his first in 15 games since being acquired from Arizona, the way Calgary's forecheck had swarmed the Penguins at various points.
Although Galchenyuk managed just one shot during more than 16 minutes of ice time, he made the most of it by swatting a Jared McCann rebound past Rittich from the right hash mark at 11:49 of the opening period, one second before a a delay-of-game minor on Flames defenseman Mark Giordano was about to expire.
Galchenyuk was understandably relieved, while his teammates insisted their confidence in him never wavered.
"It was just a matter of time," Kahun said.
Yeah, lots of it. Much more than the Penguins ever would have expected when they traded for him, certainly.
The stress -- or perhaps, distress -- of being unable to score prompted Galchenyuk to routinely stay on the ice after practice for extra work lately, to try to rediscover the touch that has allowed him to score as many as 30 goals in an NHL season.
"He puts a lot of pressure on himself to help us win," Sullivan said.
Galchenyuk was one of the Penguins' most effective forwards in this game -- he not only scored their first goal but assisted on the second, and wasn't on the ice for either Calgary goal -- but it was not a night on which the bar for such things was set particularly high.
The first subtle hint of that came when the Flames recorded 10 of the game's first 11 shots.
"I don't think, as a group, it (was) one of our best," Sullivan said. "For whatever reason, it didn't seem like we had a lot of jump, especially early in the game. But I give our players a lot of credit. There are going to be nights over the course of an 82-game schedule where you have those kinds of nights where it's a little bit of a struggle, and I thought we found a way to stay in the game, to defend hard, to be hard to play against."
The hardest thing of all for Calgary proved to be getting pucks past Jarry, who ranks first in the league in goals-against average (1.82) and save percentage (.945) among goalies who have appeared in three or more games.
Oh sure, Dillon Dube did it when he was left alone near the left hash mark at 7:34 of the first period. So did Sean Monahan, from inside the left circle during a power play at 15:09 of the second.
But when the Flames had a chance to claim the extra point during overtime -- when Mikael Backlund had a point-blank chance, and when Gaudreau got his breakaway -- Jarry came up with the stops that gave Guentzel the opportunity to add to his collection of game-winners.
"Those timely saves for us," Sullivan said, "they help you win games."
Sometimes, even when it seems like it's destined to be one of those nights.
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