Dan’s Daily: Vegas Miracle; Penguins RFA Decisions

How about that, Reilly Smith? It might go down as the second most infamous goal in Edmonton Oilers history, as an own goal credited to Smith with just 0.4 seconds remaining gave the Vegas Golden Knights a win in Game 3. The Capitals went flat against the Hurricanes, and that series looks like it’s taking shape. NHL rumors are slowing, but the Utah Mammoth might go big time this summer, using their tens of millions in cap space to add, add, and add everything possible. And we dig into the Pittsburgh Penguins’ restricted free agents and pass verdicts on who they re-sign and who they don’t.

The VGK game Saturday was pretty good. I had a little birthday party to attend, but the game was on and 1,5 of my two eyes were on it. However, in the final seconds, I looked away, expecting overtime, and then looked back to see a celebration. And I knew every sportswriter there just had a professional heart attack.

A bit about our job: You’ve got about five minutes from the horn to get to the locker room. Edmonton is easy, but it’s not a short walk. To have so little time to change a story that captures an epic ending, get to the room, have a couple of conversations, then get back to the keyboard for the second or third story of the reactions and analysis must have been extreme stress.

And adrenaline. And I absolutely love those nights. The Penguins gave us more than half a dozen this season, but sadly for them, most of the late goals were against them. One goal can change the entire analysis of the game.

Pittsburgh Penguins

Pittsburgh Hockey Now: Shelly Anderson was ready and waiting for the big moment when two of the four Penguins horsemen rode together again. Unfortunately, Marc-Andre Fleury didn’t start, and Sidney Crosby didn’t score in Game 1 for Team Canada.

Now, let’s grab a fork and dig into the meaty issue. The Penguins have five RFAs, and a couple of them are easy decisions to re-sign, but there are a couple more that are anything but. Who gets a contract, how much should it be worth, and who should go? It’s a full breakdown of the Penguins’ restricted free agents.

I think this story got lost in the shuffle–we put Erik Karlsson’s season on the lab table for a season grade. The more I wrote, the more complicated, but also unflattering it got. Here is Karlsson’s report card.

There’s even some good Mike Sullivan criticism in that story, though I have yet to figure out how 25-year-old P.O Joseph is not considered a young player by many Penguins fans, but 27-year-old Jesse Puljujarvi with hundreds of games of NHL experience was. Don’t worry, I edited out that eye-poke from the original story.

Steelers Now: Love the underdog? There’s a Division III player in Steelers rookie camp trying to impress and get himself to the next level. Alan Saunders has all of the Steelers’ rookie camp oddities.

Pittsburgh Baseball Now: THIS is what we’ve wanted to see. THIS is the fire and passion that has been missing from a pathetic, apathetic, under-served yet still underachieving team with an inept ownership and apparently subpar management: A fiery ejection. In just his second game, new Pittsburgh Pirates manager Don Kelly got tossed.

No one needs the theatrics that Lloyd McClendon tried to bring 20 years ago, but some heart will go a long way, especially if some locally sourced brains back it up.

NHL Rumors, News, & National Hockey Now

Vegas Hockey Now: I love Hannah Kirkell’s headline. INSANITY! If the game were in Las Vegas, there would have been bedlam, but instead, somewhere close to 19,000 Oilers fans fell deathly silent. You could hear the Golden Knights celebrate. They earned it by outplaying Edmonton for most of the 60 minutes, suffocating the Oilers’ offense, and the hockey gods rewarded them in the most dramatic way possible. Here are the full takeaways and what the hell really happened in the Vegas Golden Knights shocker.

Somewhere, Steve Smith just dropped his head.

Montreal Hockey Now: Should I stay or should I go now? You gotta let me know. Marc Dumont has the unvarnished look. The plucky and surprising Montreal Canadiens have a few key free agents with tenuous futures in the bleu, blanc, et rouge. Who stays and who goes among the Canadiens’ free agents?

Daily Face-Off: A new name and lots of new players? The Utah Mammoth have a lot of salary cap space and plenty of needs, but they’re within striking distance of the playoffs. It’s their first summer of meaningful NHL trade rumors. Frank Seravalli reports that you should expect a spending spree in Utah.

TSN: Here are the deets for the Hurricanes shutting out the Capitals. It seems Carolina is taking control of the series.

And more from Rick Westhead on the Friday testimony and cross-examination of E.M. The cross-exam is becoming a marathon as Alex Formenton’s lawyer, Dan Brown, is using security footage from the bar to poke holes in her story. It could be the reporting here, but he seems to be obsessively focused on how much (or how little) she had to drink at the bar.