2024-02-16 04:10:00
Sidney Crosby wasn’t going to let Connor Bedard get all the attention Thursday night when he returned to action.
The captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins stood out with two goals in a 4-1 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks, thus stopping his team’s slide to three defeats.
Before the match, the Hawks announced that their young star would play his first game since January 5. Bedard was sidelined with a broken jaw following a hit by Brendan Smith of the New Jersey Devils.
However, the match was only 15 seconds old for Crosby to change the reflectors and send them towards his team. The Penguins forward skillfully redirected a point shot from Marcus Pettersson to open the scoring.
A little more than 10 minutes later, Bedard was the victim of a turnover entering the zone. His pass was intercepted on the fly by Drew O’Connor and he restarted the attack. He passed the disc to Reilly Smith and the latter got the better of Arvid Soderblom.
Bedard wasn’t going to let this game haunt him for long. The Hawks forward made a nice lofted pass to Philipp Kurashev who had no trouble making the strings vibrate in the middle period. For Bedard, it was a 19th assist in his 40th game.
Crosby, however, gave his team a two-goal lead in the third period. He was forgotten at the mouth of the net and Rickard Rakell spotted him to deal a hard blow to the Hawks. Crosby thus reached the plateau of 30 goals in a season for the 12th time since the start of his career.
Bryan Rust completed the score in an empty net. In front of the Penguins cage, Alex Nedeljkovic made 27 saves. Soderblom stopped 23 pucks.
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