Joel Blomqvist earned the start tonight, even after Tristan Jarry joined the team Sunday from his conditioning stint with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in the American Hockey League, meaning the Penguins have three goalies. The 22-year-old rookie was playing extremely well and deserved this opportunity.

Unfortunately, Blomqvist was unable to build on the momentum from Friday’s win in Washington, conceding three goals in the first ten minutes. He would have liked to find the first two. Alex Nedeljkovic, who started the evening as a substitute, took time to find his game after starting the competition in relief. The Stars doubled their lead before the end of the first period.

“All you can do is take one shot at a time and try to focus on the next shot, the next puck. It’s tough, it’s tough,” Nedeljkovic said. “Obviously it can get away from you quickly and things snowball from there. It’s a shame we had one of those nights this evening.

That being said, the Penguins gave up a number of prime chances. Before the game, head coach Mike Sullivan said Dallas’ ability to create offensive attack is “really good…we’re going to have to make sure we’re locked into our transition defense.” But the Penguins still had trouble cutting down their looks.

“We knew they were a dangerous team and we didn’t take that into account,” Ryan Graves said. “We try to play with a structure, and sometimes we stray from it. It’s a work in progress and when we’re on top of the pucks and we’re responsible for our decisions and we’re playing in the right areas, we’re a good team. It’s difficult to play against us…. but as we move away from that, it brings us trouble. »

After the Penguins returned to the locker room, Crosby said there’s not much to say when the scoreboard looks like that.

“You just have to play through it. You can’t stop. You can’t give up,” the captain said. “You know, we put ourselves in this position. It’s just a difficult situation to live in. We have to keep playing and see what happens. Additionally, you cannot change the period. It happened, and we have to find ways to get through it.

Nedeljkovic settled in in the second period, making several excellent saves. Beauvillier found this goal on a set-up from Valtteri Puustinen, and their trio with Blake Lizotte had some good moments. Nedeljkovic said they had to look at things as if the remaining 40 minutes were 1-1.

“Obviously, be angry, be frustrated, be whatever you want to be. Tomorrow is a new day,” Nedeljkovic said. “You wake up, move on. We will watch the video. This won’t be fun for anyone. A loss is a loss. It doesn’t matter if you lose 1-0 or 10-1. It sucks, obviously. It’s very humiliating. It’s a really bad feeling, but at the end of the day, it’s just a defeat.