Goalie Stuart Skinner was not the reason the Pittsburgh Penguins entered Saturday’s Game 4 against the Philadelphia Flyers facing a 3-0 series deficit. He was arguably their best player through the first two games, and played well enough to win at least one of them. Despite that, head coach Dan Muse still opted to make a goalie switch on Saturday just to shake things up and give the team a different look.
It worked.
Arturs Silovs came off the bench and stopped 28-of-30 shots to help the Penguins earn a 4-2 win, fighting off elimination and forcing a Game 5 in Pittsburgh on Monday night.
Sidney Crosby, Rickard Rakell, Kris Letang and Connor Dewar provided the offense for the Penguins in the win.
Arturs Silovs helps Penguins force Game 5 in series
While a goalie switch in the middle of a playoff series is usually rare, and the type of thing that only gets utilized in desperate times, it is not really a huge shock here. Mostly because the Penguins spent most of the regular season going with a goalie rotation that saw Skinner and Silovs share the night with a nearly 50-50 split, alternating starts every game.
It was not until the final two weeks of the regular season that Skinner started to separate himself and take over the starting job going into the playoffs.
Aside from just wanting to change things up, Muse might have been a little concerned about a couple of the goals that Skinner allowed in their Game 3 loss and used that as the tipping point for making the switch.
Whatever the reason, it worked, and Silovs played a big role in the win. While the Penguins played what was easily their best game of the series, they still had too many breakdowns in the second period and allowed too many odd-man rushes that could have swung the game and series in a different direction. Silovs was able to bail them out, and probably earned himself another start on Monday.
While Silovs does not have an extensive track record of play in the NHL and is technically still considered a rookie, he does have big-game experience and has played well in some moments. He helped the Vancouver Canucks win a playoff series a couple of years ago by also coming off the bench, and has played well on the international stage for Latvia in some big games. If he can get the Penguins back into this series, it might be his biggest moment yet.