Penguins Room: Rust says, ‘That’s How We Need to Play’

ST. LOUIS — The Pittsburgh Penguins threw 48 shots at St. Louis goalie Jordan Binnington at Enterprise Center Saturday.

It wasn’t until the last of those, by Bryan Rust at 1:16 of overtime, got past him that the 3-2 victory that ended their four-game losing streak was secure.

But even though the Penguins weren’t capitalizing on most of their chances, often because of strong play by Binnington, Rust said he and his teammates weren’t getting frustrated.

“I think everybody knew that if we just kept going, we were going to get some pucks in the net,” he said. “And that’s what we did.”

The victory raised the Penguins’ record to 28-21-9, and could provide a template of sorts for how they’d like to approach games for the rest of the regular season.

“I thought we were on our toes, had a lot of chances,” Rust said. “That’s how we need to play here a lot, going forward.”

There are, however, some blemishes they’d like to remove from their game, like allowing a game-tying goal with less than 2 1/2 minutes to go in regulation, although Rust noted that there was a positive even in the aftermath of that.

“Obviously, we wouldn’t have liked to give up that late one,” he said. “But we showed a bit of resilience, just getting our heads back into winning that game.”

Marcus Pettersson

Marcus Pettersson had gone 55 games without a goal, not scoring one since last April 29 against Columbus.

That drought finally ended when he threw a shot past Binnington from above the left hash mark at 14:32 of the third period to break a 1-1 tie and give the Pittsburgh Penguins a 2-1 lead.

“I’ve been waiting all year,” Pettersson said. “Good timing for it.”

Pettersson said athletic trainer Chris Stewart got the puck for him and that he plans to save it for his newborn son, Frans.

“It was an emotional week for me and my family,” he said.

It appeared that his goal would be the game-winner — “I thought so,” Pettersson said, “but stuff happens out there” — until Justin Faulk of St. Louis countered just over three minutes later to send the game to overtime.

“They tied it up,” Pettersson said. “But the feeling on the bench was, ‘We’re going to get this one.’ And we did. That was huge for us.”

And it was earned, as the Penguins had the better of play throughout the game.

“We had a really good effort tonight,” Pettersson said. “We got rewarded for it, too.”

Tristan Jarry

Tristan Jarry stopped 25 of 27 shots in his third game back after missing 16 of 18 because of a couple of injuries.

It was his best showing of the three, and he acknowledged that getting those previous starts had helped him get his conditioning back to a higher level.

“Being able to play games, it helps,” Jarry said.

He understandably was more pleased with how things went than he had been during a 7-2 loss to Edmonton two nights earlier, when he was pulled after two periods.

“Obviously, I was a little bit disappointed with the result last game,” Jarry said. “I just wanted to be better tonight. That was my sole goal, to be better than last game.”

Binnington, his St. Louis counterpart, faced a barrage of pucks throughout the game, including 21 shots in the opening period.

And even though it took the Pittsburgh Penguins almost 27 minutes to score on Binnington, Jarry suggested that the offense they generated led to good things in other aspects of their game.

“We put a lot of pucks on net,” he said. “We were crashing the net a lot. Just being committed to defense. I think we did a good job on the penalty-kill. When we’re engaged and doing well on the penalty-kill, that sets us up for the rest of our game.”