The Penguins earned it — the game and the expected-goals battle both.
The Penguins won 4-3 in a shootout, surviving Montreal's goaltending masterclass. J. Dobes stopped 28 of 31 shots with a 0.903 SV% and overperformed by 1.68 goals—he nearly stole a game Pittsburgh was built to dominate.
And dominate they did. Pittsburgh controlled 56% of expected goals (4.68–3.61), held 55% of shot attempts (31–25 on goal), and led 8-6 in high-danger chances. By every underlying metric, this should have been a regulation victory. Instead, Dobes kept Montreal alive, turning the contest into a shootout battle that could've gone either way.
Pittsburgh's relentlessness showed on the rush: 2 goals on 27 chances, a conversion rate that, while matched by Montreal's own 2 goals on 27 opportunities, came from a superior position. The Penguins crashed the net effectively, creating 6 rebound chances that somehow stayed out. A. Silovs, Pittsburgh's goaltender, stopped 22 of 25 shots (0.880 SV%, +0.61 vs expected), performing capably but not dramatically.
The irony: Pittsburgh underperformed their 4.68 expected goals by 1.7, meaning they wasted elite chances across regulation. Montreal, conversely, got carried by Dobes's brilliance. Then in the shootout, Rickard Rakell's backhander from the doorstep ended it—a punctuation mark on Pittsburgh's dominance.
This win feels both inevitable and fortunate: inevitable because Pittsburgh's metrics were clearly superior, fortunate because one goaltender's performance nearly altered the outcome. In a game where the expected-goal share so heavily favored one team, the shootout felt like Montreal stealing a point they didn't earn.