3 takeaways: Penguins overcome valiant effort by Nashville netminder Juuse Saros

Three takeaways from the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 2-0 win over Nashville on Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena:

Solving Saros

Two goals were enough for the Penguins on Thursday, but had they faced a less-talented netminder than Nashville’s Juuse Saros, that number may well have been five or six.

Saros faced 45 shots and made 43 saves, many of which kept his team alive in the low-scoring game, which was only 1-0 in favor of the Penguins until Jake Guentzel’s power-play goal with just under seven minutes remaining in regulation.

“He played well,” Guentzel said. “We knew going into tonight that he’s a good goaltender. That’s the biggest thing for us. We know that we just can’t get frustrated. We’ve got to make sure to keep going. We had a few nice plays and we’re just happy to get those.”

Winger Jason Zucker, despite going on to score the first goal of the game, his 26th of the season, with 5:45 left in the second period, had plenty of room to feel frustrated, as he saw two very solid 1-on-1 chances denied by Saros.

With about nine minutes left in the first period, Zucker gained the offensive zone and handled a pass from Rickard Rakell.

Skating around Nashville defenseman Cal Foote, Zucker had a backhand attempt in front of the crease stopped by Saros.

Zucker had arguably an even better look in the second period, as he gracefully outmaneuvered a different Predators blueliner, Dante Fabbro, before attempting another backhander on Saros, which was once again denied.

Ultimately, Zucker was far from the only Penguin to see a quality look fought off by Saros.

Josh Archibald, skating through the neutral zone with the puck on the penalty kill, had a solid shot and rebound attempt in front of the cage in the first period, while Sidney Crosby just missed on a backdoor power-play rebound try with two minutes left before the first intermission.

The list went on. Unfortunately for Saros, he was not rewarded for his efforts, as the Predators were shut out, handing him the loss.

“We had a lot of good looks and give Saros credit, he’s tough,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “He’s one of the top goalies in the league, and he certainly showed it tonight with some of the saves that he made down there.”

Penalty kill perfection

Nashville may have entered Thursday evening have struggled immensely on the man-advantage over its last nine games, but the Penguins should not let that diminish their perfect performance on the penalty kill.

To be precise, the Predators were just 1 of 26 (4%) on the power play since March 14.

Against Pittsburgh, they got three tries, all of which the Penguins shut down.

“I thought we were all on the same page,” defenseman Brian Dumoulin said. “You saw a lot of guys blocking shots, getting in lanes and making (Nashville’s) entries tough so we could make plays out of our (defensive) zone and not give them too much (offensive) zone time. I thought we really kept our shifts short, were able to stay fresh and pressure them up the ice too.”

For Sullivan, that represented a welcomed change of pace, given his club had allowed power-play goals in six straight games.

Dating to March 18, the Penguins had managed only a 61.1% (11 of 18) kill rate, with Thursday being the first time they prevented an opponent from scoring on the man-advantage in two weeks.

Nashville managed six shots in total over their three power plays.

“We want to be a pressure kill,” Sullivan said. “We want to put our opponents’ power plays under heat, but it has to be collective pressure and it has to be smart in the right ways. Otherwise, we could get exposed and they could use our aggression against us, but I thought tonight (we) did a real good job.”

The Penguins are 17th in the NHL with a 78.9% penalty kill.

A rare shutout

The Penguins’ win over Nashville, while important and much-needed given the team’s recent body of work, did little to move the needle with respect to the Eastern Conference playoffs standings.

Florida, which entered Thursday one point behind the Penguins for the second wild-card spot, earned two points by defeating Montreal in regulation, thus remaining a lone point out of playoff contention.

The Penguins have a game in hand over the Panthers in addition to the Islanders, who, with 87 points, hold the first wild-card spot in the East.

If they haven’t already, the Penguins will begin to look ahead to their back-to-back home games Saturday and Sunday against Boston and Philadelphia, two crucially important showdowns as the regular season winds down.

But Thursday night was just the second shutout the Penguins have recorded all season, with the team having last held an opponent (Winnipeg) scoreless on Nov. 19.

While worth only two points, and with their spot in the playoffs far from solidified, the Penguins’ win over Nashville provides a good foundation on which to build over the final seven games of the season.

“I just think we’ve got to feel good about it tonight,” Sullivan said. “That’s an important aspect, just in the confidence that we need moving forward. I think we can take that out of tonight.”