The Pittsburgh Penguins and the New York Rangers meet in NHL action from Madison Square Garden on Saturday night.
The Pittsburgh Penguins will look to bounce back from a 3-2 OT loss to Boston last time out. Sidney Crosby leads the Pens in scoring with 7 points coming on 3 goals and 4 assists while Bryan Rust has 2 goals and 4 assists for his 6 points so far this season. Jake Guentzel, Jared McCann and Teddy Blueger each have 5 points coming on 2 goals and 3 assists this season. Tristan Jarry has seen the bulk of the work for the Pens, going 2-4 with a 3.92 GAA while Casey DeSmith has a 2-0 record with a 2.76 GAA this season.
The New York Rangers will be looking to build off of a 3-2 overtime win over the Sabres in their last matchup. Artemi Panarin leads the Rangers in scoring with 8 goals coming on 3 goals and 5 assists while Pavel Buchnevich has 6 points with 2 goals and 4 helpers and Adam Fox has 5 points with 4 assists. Phil Di Giuseppe also has 4 assists and Filip Chytil and Colin Blackwell each have 3 points with Chytil logging a pair of goals while Blackwell has a pair of assists. Igor Shesterkin and Alexandar Georgiev each hav a 1-2 record on the year with Georgiev posting a shutout and a 2.66 GAA while Shesterkin’s made 5 starts with a 2.73 GAA.
Pittsburgh is 4-1 in their last 5 games overall and 0-6 in their last 6 road games while the over is 5-2 in their last 7 games overall. New York is 2-9 in their last 11 games overall and 1-5 in their last 6 games against a team with a winning record while the under is 6-0 in their last 6 games against a team with a winning record. The over is 17-6-3 in the last 26 meetings between these two teams and 4-1 in the last 5 meetings between these two teams in New York.
I’m trying to get myself to make a case for a side here, but Pittsburgh hasn’t looked very good early on and New York’s looked even worse, which leads me to the total. I’m going to back the over here. A big reason for both teams struggles has been poor goaltending as Tristan Jarry & Casey DeSmith for Pittsburgh and Igor Shesterkin and Alexandar Georgiev for the Rangers all have a sub.900 save percentage up to this point in the season, which sounds good on the surface but hockey purists know that’s not a good sign. I think whoever starts here is going to give up a few goals on both sides and I could easily see a 4-3 game here. The over’s hit in 8 of the last 10 meetings including the first meeting of this season, so I’ll take the over once again.