PITTSBURGH (AP) Sidney Crosby doesn’t really have an explanation for how he does what he does. He just does it.So if you’re looking for clarity on how the Pittsburgh Penguins star managed to knock a pass from Jake Guentzel out of the air Philadelphia Flyers Hoodies Womens , deflect it forward to the front of his stick before tapping it by one of the best goaltenders on the planet to spark his team to a 5-3 win over Montreal, look elsewhere.”You try to finish plays out in practice,” Crosby said after the 406th goal of his career, one unlike the 405 that came before it. ”Sometimes it works out that you can do it in the game and sometimes it doesn’t. Fortunately, it did today.”Montreal rallied from a two-goal deficit to take a 3-2 lead 14:24 into the third on Jacob de la Rose’s fourth goal of the season. The advantage lasted less than a minute. Guentzel chipped a pass to Crosby and Crosby did the rest.”Are you surprised, really?” said Price, who finished with 34 saves in his return after missing a month due to a concussion. ”It was a great play. I tried to hit it and he got it first, then he batted it back in. That’s pretty impressive.”And pretty necessary for the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions, who avoided dropping both games of a back-to-back against also-rans Montreal and the New York Islanders.”It was a huge goal for us,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan said. ”It was an answer to the goal that they got to gain the lead to go in. To go in after two periods with a tie game was really important for us.”Derick Brassard put the Penguins in front to stay by beating Price 2:38 into the third period and Crosby became the third active player with 700 career assists when he set up Guentzel for an insurance goal with less than 2 minutes to play.”It was a weird second period but I think after the second we knew it was a big two points for us,” said Guentzel, who had a goal and two assists. ”We needed to come out in the third and I think we did that tonight.”Evgeni Malkin and Patric Hornqvist also scored for the Penguins Philadelphia Flyers Hats Womens , who drew within two points of idle first-place Washington in the Metropolitan Division. Casey DeSmith finished with 27 saves and happened to have a pretty good view of Crosby treating the puck like a yo-yo.”That was one of the cooler things I’ll see,” DeSmith said. ”It was perfect timing, too, right at the end of the second, get it right back, I think that was a huge goal.”Jonathan Drouin, Nikita Scherbak and Jacob de la Rose scored for the Canadiens but Montreal lost for the ninth time in 10 games.”It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, it sucks to lose,” Montreal forward Brendan Gallagher said. ”I don’t think anyone in here is happy with how it’s been going lately. You come to the rink everyday with the expectation that you’re going to win a hockey game and too many times, I think we’ve left disappointed. It’s been tough.”The Penguins are in the midst of a sluggish stretch in which they’ve mixed performances where they look very much like a team capable of winning a third straight Cup with clunkers like their 4-1 loss to the fading New York Islanders on Tuesday night. Sullivan chastised his players afterward for yet another lethargic start and lackluster play in the defensive end.Barely 24 hours later, the start was better after Malkin and Hornqvist gave the Penguins a 2-0 lead, but the play in their defensive zone was iffy at best.Drouin scored off the rush late in the first period to give the Canadiens momentum. Scherbak tied it 8:19 into the second with a gorgeous short-handed deke by DeSmith. Montreal briefly took the lead when de la Rose followed his own shot Custom Philadelphia Flyers Jerseys , skating by three guys in black sweaters to tap in his own rebound.Crosby, however, responded in a way few of his peers can.”You’re really sure what he’s going to do,” Guentzel said. ”I think he amazes you every night.”NOTES: The game featured a rarity: two penalty shots. Price easily stopped Pittsburgh’s Derick Brassard in the first. DeSmith turned aside Gallagher in the second. … Pittsburgh is 9-6-2 in the second night of back-to-backs. … Montreal’s 24 road losses are a franchise record. … Linesman Steve Miller left late in the second period and missed several minutes after having his right hand gashed. Miller was back on the ice for the start of the third period.UP NEXTCanadiens: At Buffalo on Friday night. Montreal is 3-0 against the Sabres this season.Penguins: Host New Jersey on Friday night. The Devils have won the first two meetings this season.— GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) — The Arizona Coyotes lost four of their first five games, three by shutout.Another lost season in the desert apparently on the way.The thing about those early games, though, is they were close, unlike the start of last season. The Coyotes played well, just couldn’t seem to catch the right break or get pucks to find the net.Once the pucks started going in, the Coyotes couldn’t seem to miss.Behind a scoring flurry that would have been unthinkable on previous teams, Arizona is off to its best 11-game start (6-5-0) since 2013-14.“I really like all our games; we played well in all of them www.sanjosesharksteamshop.com , we competed well,” Coyotes forward Derek Stepan said. “Yeah, we made some mistakes that cost us some goals early on, but we’re learning quickly.”It’s been a long-arching curve.The Coyotes have struggled since reaching the 2012 Western Conference finals, seeming to be in perpetual rebuilding mode. Arizona got last season off to a miserable start, needing 12 games to win for the first time to fall out of playoff contention before the season’s first month was over.The Coyotes played better the last two months of the 2017-18 season and hoped it would carry over into this season.It did not, at least early.Arizona opened the season with a pair of shutout losses and had four goals its first five games — three of those in its lone win.Then something clicked.The Coyotes beat the Chicago Blackhawks 4-1 on the road on Oct. 18 and, after a 5-3 loss at Winnipeg, have been one of the NHL’s hottest teams.With Tuesday night’s 5-1 home win over Ottawa, the Coyotes have outscored opponents 20-4 during a four-game winning streak. Arizona has 27 goals over a six-game span, a first for the franchise since 2006-07.“The guys were sticking with it and practicing like the goals would come,” Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet said. “You have to have that mentality in this league. We’ve got good mojo right now and we don’t want to wreck it.”Arizona has been among the league leaders in shots per game since the start of the season and the shooting percentage has dramatically increased since the minuscule 1.6 to start the season.The Coyotes seemed to get some bad breaks on shots early in the season San Jose Sharks T-Shirts Womens , hitting posts and crossbars, having pucks squirt out of their reach in the offensive zone. They also didn’t seem to create their own luck by getting traffic in front of the crease and putting shots in spots where goalies could make easy saves.The breaks have been coming the past few games, such as Stepan’s blue line, short-handed goal that skittered off the ice and through Ottawa goalie Mike Condon’s pads .Arizona also has been creating some of that luck with hard, smart play, getting traffic in front of opposing goaltenders and more precise shooting.“You earn your bounces,” Stepan said. “We had some bounces going the other way early on in the year, now they’re starting to go our way and in a few weeks, they’re going to come back the other way. Good teams find ways to win any given night regardless of the bounces.”With the scoring boost, the Coyotes have continued to play stingy defense, the one area that helped them get through the difficult times in the past.Arizona has limited good chances against and its goalies, Antti Raanta and Darcy Kuemper San Jose Sharks Hoodies Womens , have been superb, combining to give the Coyotes the NHL’s best goals-against average at 1.91. Raanta, healthy after an injury-filled first season in the desert, is fourth in the NHL with a 1.99 goals-against average.The Coyotes also have the NHL’s second-best penalty kill at 90.6 percent and have a league-high six short-handed goals to three power-play goals allowed. Stepan’s goal against Ottawa gave Arizona short-handed goals in three straight games for the second time in franchise history (1985). The Coyotes are 11th NHL team since 1933 to have five short-handed goals in three games.“When we’re sticking with our game plan and everybody is dialed in, we’re a really good team,” Raanta said. “As a goalie, it’s a dream to play behind that team.”Especially when they’re scoring goals, as they are now.
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