Penguins’ Recipe for Success Has Not-So-Secret Ingredients

CRANBERRY — The Pittsburgh Penguins are aware of all the things they did right during their 5-3 victory over Edmonton at PPG Paints Arena Thursday night.

They know the importance of starting well and building a 4-1 lead by the first intermission.

The value of the 39 saves — more than a few of them timely — made by goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic, 33 of which came during the final 40 minutes.

The significance of the team-wide commitment to defending a third-period lead — something the Penguins have failed to do multiple times in 2024-25 — that was reflected by their game total of 24 blocked shots, well above their average of about 15 for the season.

“It’s a perfect recipe,” defenseman Kris Letang said. “You play a really good offensive team (and) you play well defensively and you still get five goals on the board. That’s a game you can build on and know that if you focus on playing with details in your end zone, you’re going to get rewarded.”

Of course, recognizing that what they did against the Oilers is a formula for winning is one thing, but repeating it on a consistent basis can be quite another.

It shouldn’t take long to determine whether the performance against Edmonton was a foundation on which they can build a strong second half of the season or merely an isolated high point in a season that hasn’t produced many of them.

That’s because the Penguins are about to take on two of the other teams fighting for the pair of wild-card playoff berths in the Eastern Conference. Ottawa will visit PPG Paints Arena Saturday afternoon at 4:08, while Tampa Bay comes to town Sunday at 5:08 p.m.

Win those two — the third and fourth installments on a five-game homestand — and the Penguins could launch themselves into the final weeks before the league’s Four Nations tournament break with some serious momentum.

Suffer the kind of lapses and letdowns that have surfaced over the first 43 games, and they should expect to find themselves again drifting away from the pack contending for a playoff spot.

“These next two games are big for us,” center Kevin Hayes said.

While Edmonton’s tag-team extraordinaire of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl gave the Penguins fits at times — Draisaitl scored two of the Oilers’ goals and McDavid assisted on all three — that was more a reflection of their exceptional abilities than of any major failings by the Penguins.

Focus and effort certainly were not an issue Thursday.

“I liked how hard we competed,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “It wasn’t perfect, by any stretch, but our intentions were in the right place.”

The Penguins’ challenge will be to keep them there for the next three months. Maintaining the sled-dog tenacity they showed against the Oilers would be a start.

“We kept playing, every shift,” Nedeljkovic said. “Obviously, we had a great first period — we scored four goals — but after every single one, we stayed on it. We wanted to keep building on it and to keep going and continue that momentum. It’s easy to score and kind of take a breath, but everybody kept going and going.

“Even when they pushed back in the second period, I thought we stayed with it. We responded. That response isn’t always going to be a dominant shift in the offensive zone. Sometimes, all it is is having a solid defensive shift. Even if you give up a chance or you give up a goal … things are going to happen. But if you’re doing things the right way, those mistakes happen less often and Grade A (scoring) chances are less frequent.”

Although Edmonton has more offensive talent than most clubs and generated a healthy number of dangerous chances, the Penguins made them work for almost all of them.

“I feel like the last couple of games we’ve lost, we’ve given the other team offense,” Hayes said. “This time, we really harped on not giving them free offense. They had to go 200 feet every time.”

Nedeljkovic agreed that being forced to do that had an impact on Edmonton’s high-octane attack.

“We made them exert energy in their own end,” he said. “I have to imagine that once or twice, at least, Draisaitl and McDavid spent an entire shift playing defense. That’s a full minute of them on the ice not doing anything, offensively. Then you’ve got another minute, at least, of them sitting on the bench, so you go two to three minutes, potentially, with them not even touching the puck in the offensive zone.”

The aspect of the template that served them so well against Edmonton won’t necessarily be easy to replicate on a regular basis, but Nedeljkovic believes it is the best way to accumulate points in the standings.

“We have to find a way to continue that mindset, that willingness to do whatever it takes to win,” he said. “It’s hard to play that way and be disciplined every day, but that’s what it takes to win and be successful and string together three, four, five, six games in a row. That’s what the best teams in this league do.”