Pittsburgh Penguins forward Jared McCann often is praised for having a “shoot-first” mentality.
Blessed with a heavy wrister, he rarely hesitates to put a puck on net on the occasions he has a clean look.
During Saturday’s 3-2 road win against the Buffalo Sabres at KeyBank Center, McCann collected his 12th goal of the season at 10 minutes, 30 seconds of the first period with nothing close to a clean look at the net. Or any kind of view of the front of it.
Collecting a rebound in the left corner of the offensive zone, McCann immediately shuffled the puck to the crease, where it struck former Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins goaltender Dustin Tokarski’s backside and deflected into the cage.
Such a tactic is hardly routine. And Penguins coaches don’t explicitly advocate it. But they certainly don’t discourage it. Especially because captain Sidney Crosby routinely plays puck into the crease from bad angles in hopes of getting an intentional (or fortunate) bounce.
“It’s a real heads-up play by Jared,” coach Mike Sullivan said via video conference. “It’s not something that we have a lot of discussions about, but what I will say is he’s watched Sid do it a number of times a year here for a number of years. And what better example? Sid scores more goals from below the goal line than anyone that I can think of. It may look like happenstance. It may look like it’s a lucky play, but it’s a real calculated play and it’s a heads-up play to try to take advantage of a goalie when he’s in that situation when he has some separation from his post and there’s some light there.
“You can use the goalie himself to bank it off of him and put it in the net. I thought it was a real smart play on Jared’s part.”
Line matters
McCann primarily played on the left wing of the second line for the second consecutive game with newly acquired forward Jeff Carter at center and Jason Zucker, typically a left winger, on the right wing.
According to Natural Stat Trick, the trio dominated the underwhelming Sabres in terms of puck possession with 13 shots attempts while only allowing four shot attempts.
“(That) line was pretty good (Saturday),” Sullivan said. “They’re talking to one another in between shifts. Jeff is still trying to learn our team concept and how we’re trying to play. But I thought his line was pretty good tonight. They had a number of scoring chances. They’re all a little bit different in how they play. But they’re complementary.”
With normal second-liners Evgeni Malkin and Kasperi Kapanen each sidelined because of injuries, McCann, Carter and Zucker largely were cobbled together after Carter was acquired in a trade with the Los Angles Kings on Monday.
“As far as if we’re going to move them around, it all depends on who is available to us and what we think the lineup looks like,” Sullivan said. “But right now, given the lineup that we have, we think this is the best combination that gives us the balance that we want and surrounds the right people with what they need to be successful. I thought Jeff had a good game in particular. His line was pretty good, as well.”
Ice chips
Defenseman Brian Dumoulin had his career-best six-game scoring streak snapped. … Rookie forward Radim Zohorna returned to the lineup after being a healthy scratch during Thursday’s 2-1 home shootout loss to the Philadelphia Flyers. He recorded 7:23 of ice time on nine shifts and had two shots on two attempts.
Seth Rorabaugh is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Seth by email at srorabaugh@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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Penguins notes: Forward Jared McCann scores from a bad angle - TribLIVE
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