PITTSBURGH (AP) — Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan didn’t tell Sidney Crosby to start shooting the puck more often. Maybe because he knew he didn’t have to.
“Quite honestly we just try to stay out of his way,” Sullivan said. “He thinks it better than we do.”
And still plays it — even at age 36 and in the middle of his 19th season — better than most.
Crosby scored twice to move within one of Hall of Famer Mark Recchi for 21st on the all-time goals list as the Penguins ended Seattle‘s franchise-record nine-game winning streak with a 3-0 win on Monday.
Tristan Jarry turned aside all 22 shots he faced for his fifth shutout of the season as Pittsburgh handed Seattle its first loss of any kind since Dec. 18 and its first loss in regulation since Dec. 10.
The Kraken came in riding a month of occasionally spectacular play that’s vaulted them into the thick of the playoff chase in the loaded Western Conference as the season reaches its midpoint. Playing the fourth game of a six-game East Coast road swing and forced to go without three regulars in defenseman Vince Dunn, center Matty Beniers and forward Andre Burakovsky, Seattle mustered little against Jarry and a Pittsburgh team smarting after consecutive overtime losses to Vancouver and Carolina.
“I just didn’t think we executed well enough,” Kraken center Jaden Schwartz said. “We looked a little tired at times. Just didn’t have that same jump and energy.”
The Penguins, frustrated after slow starts plagued them in overtime losses to Vancouver and Carolina, looked fresh during the somewhat impromptu matinee crowd. The teams agreed to move up the originally scheduled game time from 6 p.m. to 1 p.m. to avoid a direct conflict with the NFL playoff matchup between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Buffalo Bills, which was moved from Sunday to Monday after a blizzard drilled Western New York over the weekend.
The Penguins controlled play for long stretches in the opening period and finally broke through early in the second during a pretty sequence that began with a stretch pass from Marcus Pettersson to Evgeni Malkin. Malkin then chipped the puck to a streaking Bryan Rust, who threaded a backhand pass to O’Connor that O’Connor fired by Joey Daccord 49 seconds into the second.
Crosby, sprinting up the NHL’s all-time scoring list in the middle of his 19th season, collected his 575th a couple of minutes later when he went down to one knee in the right circle to blast a one-timer past Daccord 3:32 into…