Evan Rodrigues nearly matches Mario Lemieux with 3-point 1st period in Penguins win

The first bullet point among the “Player notes” on the Pittsburgh Penguins’ team release after Saturday night’s game featured two names.

One was Even Rodrigues.

The other was Mario Lemieux.

It was that kind of night for Rodrigues. And certainly, it was that kind of first period.

“Any time you can help a team win, you’re always going to be happy,” Rodrigues said after the Penguins’ 7-4 win against the New York Rangers in Game 3 of the team’s first-round series. “It was a great start for us.”

It was — and it was so great in large part because of Rodrigues. The speedy forward factored in on three goals over a span of 6 minutes, 57 seconds spanning the middle of the first period.

The only player to have more than three points in a period during the playoffs over the 55-year history of the Penguins? Lemieux.

“(Rodrigues) had a huge game for us tonight,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said after the game.

Evan Rodrigues after his 2-goal, 1-assist effort in the Penguins’ Game 3 win pic.twitter.com/QY7yGoyDi0

— Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) May 8, 2022

After earning an assist on a Jeff Carter power-play goal at 8:18 of the first period, Rodrigues scored on another power play 2:13 later. He scored again with 4:45 left in the first.

Those were the first two playoff goals of Rodrigues’ career.

Evan Rodrigues has two goals and an assist in Game 3... and we still have two periods of hockey to go. pic.twitter.com/q5x2siOHhr

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) May 7, 2022

“His versatility is one of his biggest strengths,” Sullivan said, “but he’s got good offensive instincts, and he can score goals.”

Rodrigues was doing just that over the first three months of the season when he had 15 goals over the Penguins’ first 33 games.

He scored in the season opener, added another goal in the second game two days later, accumulated six tallies through 13 games and surpassed his career high before Christmas with his 10th goal Dec. 17.

That was early in a six-game stretch in which Rodrigues had seven goals. At that point, the 28-year-old’s confidence was soaring.

“He’s a high-character kid, and he’s a confident player,” Sullivan said. “He has that quiet confidence about him — he believes he’s a good player, and he is a good player. And he’s been a good player for us all year long.”

Even when he was slumping offensively. Because after posting his fifth goal over a three-game span in early January, Rodrigues went 17 games without a goal and 37 games in which he had just one goal that beat a goalie (another was an empty-netter).

But whether it be via reliability (the only Penguin to appear in all 82 games) or all-around solid play (his possession metrics are among the best on the team), Rodrigues’ value goes beyond offensive production.

“He went through that stretch where it was a struggle for him to score goals, but he does more than that for us,” Sullivan said. “We use him on the penalty kill at times. We use him (at center) at times. We use him on the wing. We move him all around the lineup.

“Quite honestly, that’s why we signed him. He was going to be a utility player for us that we knew we could move all around the lineup.”

The Penguins like so much that they acquired him three times over a span of 18 months: via trade from the Buffalo Sabres on Feb. 24, 2020, via a one-year contract as a free agent in August of that year (after he was shipped to Toronto as a salary-cap component of the trade for Kasperi Kapanen) and then by way of another one-year free-agent contract in July.

They probably couldn’t have envisioned he’d end up sharing a franchise playoff statistical superlative with Mario Lemieux.

Keep up with the Pittsburgh Penguins all season long.