Why this Stanley Cup Final is impossible to peg

The Penguins were never going to sweep the Predators, and the script this Stanley Cup Final has followed so far is not an unusual one. The home team won the first two games, and when home ice flipped for Game 3, the series tightened to 2-1. In fact, teams that win the first two games of a Cup Final at home are 0-8 in road Game 3s since the NHL’s 2004-05 lockout.

There is nothing weird about the series standing where it does.

Pittsburgh still has a distinct edge in win probability, because while a 2-1 lead in a race to four wins is narrow, it takes tons to overcome. Winning Cup games is hard, and the Penguins would retain the home-ice edge in a theoretical best-of-three even if they lose Game 4 on Monday. That is how I, a Penguins fan, am rationalizing things after Nashville crushed them in a party of a Game 3 on Saturday night, 5-1.

But this is a weird series.

In three games, the Predators have controlled 57 percent of the series’ even-strength shot attempts to the Penguins’ 43 percent. Shot attempts are not a be-all and end-all, because they don’t tell the story of goaltending or shot quality. (The Penguins have elite shooters and probably the best goalie in the series. More on that shortly.) But getting thrashed in the shot-attempt count suggests you don’t have the puck much, and that’s exactly what’s been happening in the series’ first three games.

In the 82-game regular season, the league’s top possession team by shot attempts was the Kings, which controlled 55 percent. The worst team in the league was the Coyotes, at 45 percent. For Nashville to sit at 57 percent in the Stanley Cup Final is a little bit preposterous. Shot attempts are not the same thing as goals, and the Penguins deserve credit for getting nine of those in the first two games.

But still: Nashville’s been way better than Pittsburgh at even strength. The paths for the Penguins to overcome that are through special teams and goaltending. That’s been the Pens’ recipe all spring. In Game 3, it didn’t work.

Up until the Final, the Penguins had scored on 25 percent of their power plays in the playoffs — the best rate in the league for any team that got past the first round. They were at 23 percent in the regular season, third-best among the 30 NHL teams. It generally pays to have Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Phil Kessel on the top unit.

In this series, the Pens are 1-of-13. That’s horrid, but it doesn’t even tell the story of how bad it’s been. The Penguins have barely gotten the puck to the net with the man advantage all series, looking totally non-threatening for almost all of the 21 minutes they’ve spent on the power play. Their lone goal came on a two-minute five-on-three in Game 1, when Pekka Rinne let a Malkin slapper bleed through him.

Nashville is not a particularly good penalty-killing team, or at least it hasn’t been for most of the year. The Preds were 15th in the league in PK percentage over 82 games. But they’ve been the best penalty-killing club in the playoffs, and the Pens look disheveled against them. These things can ebb and flow, and it’s possible the Penguins’ power play will be stuck in an ebb for a few more games. It happens.

The Nashville netminder was egregious in Games 1 and 2, when he gave up a combined eight goals on 36 shots. Rinne had gotten progressively worse throughout the playoffs, with his save percentage declining steadily from .976 in the first round against Chicago to sub-80 percent in the first two games against the Penguins. That jibed with the idea that Rinne’s a slightly above average goalie, as he’s been for the last few years. He was crashing back to Earth, and the Penguins would win with silky smooth Matt Murray.

This is the thing about the Stanley Cup Final: It’s not that big a sample size. Rinne gave up a goal in the first three minutes on Saturday, and he almost let a bouncing dump-in get past him later in the first period. But then he became a world-beater, and in sum, he turned back 27 of the Penguins’ 28 shots. A few of his saves were outstanding, and he didn’t look like the shell of himself that he’d been in Pittsburgh.

Murray, who’d been nearly impenetrable since taking over midway through the Eastern Conference Final, gave up five goals on 33 shots. All available evidence says Murray is better than Rinne, and he probably will be going forward. But a four-game sample gives plenty of leeway for things to not go as they should.

The two best players in the playoffs (and two of the three best in the world) line up as center icemen for Pittsburgh. Nashville has an elite defensive corps, but Crosby and Malkin are, on balance, the most game-changing skaters in this series. They’ve combined for six points in three games, so it’s not like they’ve been terrible. Crosby’s been pretty good in that Nashville has not owned the puck when he’s been on the ice. When Crosby’s out there, the Penguins have at least played some offense.

Malkin’s had a tough first three games, despite a five-on-three and odd-man-rush goal in Games 1 and 2. Nashville has fired two-thirds of the shots at even strength when Malkin’s been on the ice, and he’s spent lots of time hemmed in around his own net. The Predators’ P.K. Subban-Mattias Ekholm defense pairing thrashed Malkin’s line in Game 3. Nashville’s got some studs on defense. It’s not like it’s easy to beat them, and even the best in the world get contained from time to time.

Crosby, Malkin, Kessel, and playoff goals leader, Jake Guentzel, could resume filling the net in Game 4, as Rinne turns back into a pumpkin. The Penguins could get a more typical Murray performance, score a power-play goal or two, and march home with a chance to win a Cup on their home ice for the first time in a 50-year franchise history. This forward group and goaltender remain world-class.

Or none of that could happen. Rinne might not be terrible now, and Nashville’s defense might’ve solved Malkin while limiting Crosby. Murray might let more pucks into his net — that’s what usually happens when goalies get peppered — and Nashville could win the next three games. The Predators might not even need a Game 7.

I have not the slightest sense of what’s coming next. As someone with a rooting interest in the outcome, that’s terrifying.