SLBD

The Pens ended a 17 year old little known drought Thursday night when Sidney Crosby made it 5 for 5 on the year in shootouts lifting Pittsburgh to the 3-2 SO  win.  They’d have never have gotten there had it not been for the truly outstanding play of Marc-Andre Fleury .  It marks the first time since the cup run year of 92′ that the boys of winter took both ends of a home and home with Broadstreet.

Jeff Carter got it going pretty fast for Philly from Carle and Briere 1:15 into the game but Billy Guerin would get it back to even on the now suddenly scoring Penguins Powerplay (was good for 2 tonight and on a 3 game streak) just about 2 and a half minutes later.  It felts like the game just went into some kind of acid induced frenzy for pretty much the rest of the period as play just rocketed from one end to the other.

The Pens came out rather flat in the second and let Claude Giroux get the goons squad back to the early period lead.  Chris Pronger Kunitz and Gonchar would set up Sidney Crosby for his 22nd of the year again on the Powerplay to get it knotted back up.  Then the flyers put the pedal down.  The Pens would get back to back powerplay chances i nthe middle of the period and the Flyers would almost score short handed at least 4 times.  Fluery was the difference.  He held down the fort and held the Pens in during some of their worst defensive play of the season.

The 3rd would have the Pens struggle for the early portion and at the end would see no scoring and OT solved nothing.  Fleury was perfect in the Shootout and Sid remained so (5 for 5 So on the year).  Kris Letang scored on an absolutely disgusting move that still has Brian Boucher’s knees shaking and Sid sealed the deal .

Evgeni Malkin and Alex Goligoski were both a little turn over prone  in this one and I think it’s the first game of the year where I saw the Pens outshoot and out hit and they still won, but they did need the shootout.  This was not one of Geno’s best games to be sure.  he seemed to slip back into “looking for the perfect play” mode and made some cross ice passes he shouldn’t have in lieu of scoring.  Kunitz was quietly solid with a 2 pt night.

Pascal Dupuis and Ruslan Fedotenko both left the game for periods of time but both returned to the ice before the end. I doubt those dings will be serious if at all meaningful

A win is a win, and the Pens got exactly what they needed from Philly heading into this monster stretch of their schedule, 4 pts.  Sabres on Saturday and if I hear correctly we will see Marvin the Martian Patrick LaLime and not Ryan Miller in net on the end of back to back games for the Sabres.

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