Penguins steal momentum from Flyers with another win facing elimination

The man who led another Eastern Conference behemoth to back-to-back championships once compared it to a pendulum. Quick to propel you forward, just as quick to drag you back, impossible to hold onto — the uncontainable, unpredictable chaos-maker that is playoff momentum.

"When it swings your way, you’ve got to keep it rolling as long as you can," Jon Cooper said a few years back, amid a rollercoaster first-round series of his own. "Because it can change in an instant. … Because, at some point, it is going to change."

For three games in this Battle of Pennsylvania, this series swung decidedly in the Philadelphia Flyers’ direction. The Pittsburgh Penguins looked out of sync, disconnected, rattled by their opponents’ unrelenting physicality. The Flyers seemed a team of destiny, rolling through their state rival like they rolled through the rest of the league for the past two months.

Then, two nights ago, Sidney Crosby came out in the first period of Game 4, dropped to one knee, and stunned a hostile Philly crowd with a blistering quick-trigger shot from the slot. This series has not been the same since.

After leading the Penguins to a crucial win Saturday to stave off elimination, No. 87 was centre stage again Monday night at PPG Paints Arena as Pittsburgh waved away another Flyers’ close-out attempt, pulled out another do-or-die win, and sent this series back to Philadelphia for Game 6 (Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. ET on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+).

“The last couple games, we’ve found our stride,” Crosby told the gathered media in Pittsburgh after his Pens claimed a crucial 3-2 win in Game 5. “We should feel good about that. But I think with any series, you’ve got to get better with every game, and there’s still things that we can do better. We’ll try to build on that.

"But we’re playing good hockey. We’ve got to go in there and find a way to win again."

For the third straight game, the Penguins started strong and drew first blood. The Pens had lamented a Game 3 loss last week that saw them finally get to their game in the opening frame, only to see their effort derailed as they got drawn into Philly's extracurricular physical antics once again. Game 4 saw Pittsburgh come out strong once more, and finally find a way to sustain it. But Game 5 was yet another step.

The Penguins were up 1-0 minutes into Monday night’s affair, attacking the Flyers with pace and with vigour early, when they saw their third line rewarded with a hard-earned game-opening goal off the stick of Elmer Soderblom. They kept up the pressure through the rest of the frame, each line finding worthwhile chances on netminder Dan Vladar as the Penguins chipped away with some physicality of their own, too.

Early in the second, they struck again when fourth-liner Connor Dewar wired one in off the back bar. The Flyers got two back before the period was through, but ultimately saw their comeback come undone when Kris Letang fired a puck from the point and saw it careen off the end-boards, back towards Vladar, off the netminder’s left leg, then off his right leg, before he inadvertently kicked it into the net.

“We had a really good offensive-zone shift, got the puck back to the point. Throwing pucks to the net — never a bad play,” Bryan Rust said of the wild goal, which wound up the game-winner.

“I still haven’t seen the complete shot,” Crosby said. “I just saw it laying around the goal line, or just over it. I didn’t really know how it got there. … Happy to see it go in, obviously. It’s a big goal after they tie it up there.

“To get that one late in the period there was huge. That’s a big momentum swing.”

Lineup changes bringing immediate impact for both clubs

It’s been a tightly-contested series through five games, and one element that’s become increasingly impactful is the lineup chess match between Penguins coach Dan Muse and Flyers bench boss Rick Tocchet.

Both coaches have subtly tweaked their lineups as the series has gone on, looking to ratchet up their team’s speed, or physicality, or defensive presence. Each time, the adjustments have paid off for the coaches, and that was much the case in Game 5.

On Pittsburgh’s side of the sheet, there was Soderblom, who was scratched for Game 3 of this series before being returned to the lineup in Game 4. Monday night, in Game 5, the towering Swede wound up an essential part of the Penguins’ season-saving win, as Soderblom tallied the game-opening goal that got fans at PPG Paints Arena on their feet early, and set the Flyers on their heels.

Perhaps most crucial to Soderblom’s return these past two games is what it’s done for Anthony Mantha. The big man led Pittsburgh in goal-scoring during the regular season but found himself unable to make a meaningful impact on the first few games of this series. In Game 4, he started finding his legs after being reunited with Soderblom. Monday night, the two combined for a key sequence.

“Playoff hockey’s hard. Offence is hard to come by. On that first goal, that’s exactly what you’ve got to do,” Rust said of Soderblom and Mantha’s first-period link-up. “Mo with an incredible forecheck, weighs the guy out, gets the puck, hits Soderblom in the slot for an unbelievable shot. That’s the kind of offence that we need.”

On the other side of the sheet, Tocchet made one of his first significant lineup changes Monday night when he scratched Matvei Michkov and brought fellow rookie Alex Bump into the lineup. Bump, a 22-year-old who played 17 games for the Flyers this season, had an immediate impact by scoring a silky goal in the second period to get Philly on the board and causing some havoc all night.

“He’s good on his feet, a shot threat, had three or four chances, takes it to the goal. … Really proud of the way he played tonight,” Tocchet said of Bump post-game. “He’s got a stop-and-start game — as much as he’s got the creativity, the shot, he’s got a stop-and-start game. In piles, he’s stopping and he’s coming up with loose pucks.

“We’ve got to get some other guys to play that way, that stop-and-start hockey.”

Goalie battle tilting towards Pittsburgh since Silovs entered series

No doubt the most crucial change either coach has made in this series was Muse’s decision to turn the net over to Arturs Silovs in Game 4 after starting Stuart Skinner for the first three outings. After helping his club keep its season alive on Saturday, Silovs came up with another quality performance Monday, turning aside 18 of 20 shots to earn his second straight win.

The more troubling trend for Philly, though, isn’t that Silovs has played well — it’s that the goalie battle as a whole has tilted towards the Pens since the young Latvian entered the series.

Through the first three games of this first-round bout, Vladar looked unshakeable in the Flyers net. The 28-year-old held Pittsburgh — the league’s third-best offensive outfit during the regular season — to just two goals in Games 1 and 3, and shut them out in Game 2.

Over the past two games, the Czech puck-stopper’s luck has turned.

In Game 4, Pittsburgh managed to score a crucial goal a minute into the second period, doubling an early lead, when Vladar gave the puck away behind his net and saw Rickard Rakell pounce on the rare misplay. Monday night, in Game 5, the goaltender saw a wild, unfortunate second-period bounce end with him knocking the game-winning goal into his own net.

“I liked our game when it was 2-2, we started to come. Obviously, the flukey goal — there’s been a couple of flukey goals the last couple games that have deflated us,” Tocchet said. “But you’ve got to give them credit. They’re defending really hard.”

With the series headed back to Philadelphia for the Flyers’ third chance to close the Penguins out, the coach said his group needs to put more pressure on Silovs.

“We’ve got to come up with some stuff here,” Tocchet said. “Fake some shots, deception. I think we’re just burying our head and shooting stuff at the shin pads. We’ve got to have a little more creativity.”

Crosby says he’s fine after leaving game in second period with injury scare

The Penguins faithful held their breath midway through Game 5 when they watched Crosby leave the ice in noticeable pain.

The captain was posted up in the slot when a point shot from his own defenceman hit him in the knee. Crosby dropped to the ice in a heap and stayed down in pain, before shuffling off the sheet and down the tunnel. A worrying sight after the 38-year-old was knocked out of the Olympic Games with a lower-body injury just two months ago.

Moments after he left the ice, the Flyers scored to tie the game when Travis Sanheim walked in from the point and wired in a shot that deflected off a Penguins stick.

A few minutes later, though, No. 87 returned, helped to author a solid offensive-zone shift, and dished the puck to Letang before leaving the ice for a line change — the defender threw it towards net, and watched it bounce in for the game-winner.

Crosby told the media in Pittsburgh post-game that he’s fine after the brief injury scare.

“I feel good. That stuff that happens sometimes,” he said. "You try to go to the front of the net and it’s just one of those ones that found its way. Sometimes they hit you, sometimes they go by you — that one hit me."

With the Game 5 win in tow, the Penguins captain heads into Game 6 on Wednesday, back in Philadelphia, with 100 career post-season victories in the bag. After two straight games navigating the pressure of potential elimination, he’ll look to lead his group through another bout of adversity to claim No. 101.

“That’s something that we’ve prided ourselves on all year. Throughout the season we’ve been in different situations and I think that we’ve done a great job of handling adversity,” Crosby told the media in Pittsburgh. “Again here, we’re faced with more. It doesn’t get any easier. We know it’s a big challenge going in there. But we have a lot of belief in our group.

“We’ve done it time and time again. So we’ve got to go do it again here.”