At one point, it looked grim for the Pittsburgh Penguins, who were down 3-0 to the Philadelphia Flyers at PPG Paints Arena. Moreover, it was 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, not only was Malkin the overtime hero, but he led the Penguins with two goals and four points. It was a vintage performance from the future Hall of Famer.
Meanwhile, once the Pittsburgh swapped goalies, the pressure was on rookie Joel Blomqvist to salvage the situation. He came in and made 22 saves for a .957 SV% in 33 minutes. Down 3-0, it was his job to stop the bleeding, which he did a outstanding job.
Even though veterans have been leading the charge all season, it’s been a while since Malkin had a game where he dominant. He finally broke out in a commanding way on Thursday night, to get the Penguins a valuable two points in the standings.
Although Nedeljkovic will not be part of the final outcome of the game as the Penguins rallied while he was on the bench, his reaction to getting pull 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 as funny or painful it look 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 a reflection more on a netminder than the team, so no one can blame for Nedeljkovic for flipping out, none of the goals on Thursday were his fault.
Of course, the Penguins have one of the worse 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.
NHL Highlights | Flyers vs. Penguins – February 27, 2025 Watch full game highlights from the matchup between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburgh Penguins on February 27, 2025, condensing all the action into …
It was a great rally for a team who have a patten of showing up for lenghty of stretches of games, but then one miscue ends up in the back of the net and they crumble like a house of cards.
Besides the milestone games for Malkin and Sidney Crosby, Thursday night will go down as one of the best comebacks this season. Optimistically, the win could propell the Penguins to run the table over the final month of the season 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 bad performances to recover from this late into the campaign.
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