Penguins 2, Red Wings 1 (OT-SO): Pens Finally Solve The Great Jimmy Howard

I’m pretty sure I’m the first person to notice / mention this, so please credit my astute powers of observationalism, but what in the world is going on with the Detroit Red Wings?

The Penguins outshot Detroit 47-24 on Sunday afternoon, just two days after Detroit gave up 48 shots to Nashville (and won). Granted, Detroit’s dealing with some injuries, but I can’t comprehend how missing Johan Franzen and Tomas Holmstrom — two dudes who never step more than six inches from the opposing goaltender — could contribute to Detroit magically turning from an 18-shots-against per game machine of boredom to some Western Conference Panthers-esque shooting gallery.

Equally baffling to the Red Wings’ sudden defensive struggles is the emergence of Jimmy Howard, a 2003 second-round pick with seven career NHL starts before this season and one career win, who’s been playing absolutely out of his mind, posting a .928 Save Percentage in the midst of Detroit’s malaise and turning in the most dominant goaltending performance the Penguins have faced this season (save Antti Niemi’s game in December. SAVE – get it??? I just won the Grammy for COMEDY).

Kunitz To Miss Two Weeks With “Playing For ’09 Penguins”

Yayyy, Malkin’s coming back! Aaaaaand Chris Kunitz is hurt:

The Penguins’ Chris Kunitz will be out about two weeks — beginning tonight against Boston at Mellon Arena — for what coach Dan Bylsma called a lower-body injury that has been plaguing the left winger for some time….

Malkin is expected to shift to winger and play on a line with Sidney Crosby and Ruslan Fedotenko, at least early in the game.

Bylsma also said forward Mark Letestu would make his NHL debut against Boston.

I picture a cartoony scene where Malkin enters the revolving door to the Pens’ dressing room and the door keeps spinning, Kuntiz’s tie gets caught, and it flings him back out of the locker room, keeping the injury numbers the same.

It’s actually kind of funny at this point. Kunitz was playing terribly, and I don’t doubt for a second that he could’ve had a nagging injury, but I gave up being frustrated three injuries ago and now I’m just laughing.

While we’re going for broke, how bout we just give Crosby a spinal issue? And Fleury gets shot in the ass, Joey Porter style. And Mark Letestu just explodes the second his skate touches the ice.

I would knock on wood after making these jokes, but I’m afraid a splinter might break off and fly through Goligoski’s brain.

Devils 4, Penguins 1: Anyone Surprised By The Devils’ Success Should Quit At Life

Right now, Dan Byslma is you in college when you were really hungry but it was snowing really hard out so you couldn’t leave your place to get food, so you look in the cupboard to see what you have and there’s a bag of penne pasta, a half-eaten cantaloupe, some sour cream, and a four-year-old pack of baking soda, and you actually think to yourself, “hmm, what’s the best way I can combine these ingredients to make a meal…maybe use the sour cream as a sauce for the cantaloupe and penne pasta? Then pretend the baking soda is Parmesan cheese?” No matter what you do, you’re going to end up vomiting.

That’s basically where the Penguins are right now — there’s just no way to mix and match their personnel or to change their tempo or style of play or flip-flop power play positions or anything to disguise the fact that their healthy, active roster is not the healthy, active roster of a good NHL team. We may be impressed by the occasional Chris Bourque or Chris Conner burst of speed up the wing or hustle play, but these guys are barely 4th line NHL players, let alone guys capable of handling the secondary scoring burden for a team whose remaining primary scorers also aren’t scoring. Even though the Pens played an intermittently dominant first thirty minutes, and the Devils were on back-to-back games, the outcome of this affair shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Speaking of surprises, every hockey writer, broadcaster, and fan who gushes about how “surprisingly” well the Devils are playing right now should be fired from being able to follow the NHL (including the fans somehow). Every single analyst just handed the Atlantic Division to the Pens or Flyers in preseason (besides uhhhhhthisguy), and some people predicted the Devils’ outright downfall, including most prominently Scott Burnside, who had the Devils at #24 in the ESPN Preseason Power Poll.

I’m not sure of any way to phrase this that doesn’t sound patronizing, so here it is: THE DEVILS ARE ALWAYS GOOD, YOU EFFING DUMBASSES.

Pens Juggle Lines In Effort To Have Two New Dudes Botch Crosby’s One-Timers

Dan Bylsma, tired of forcing Pens fans to yell at Chris Kunitz and Bill Guerin for never burying scoring chances created by Crosby, has graciously switched up the Penguins’ line combinations to give fans different dudes to get mad at for not finishing:

Perhaps being separated from longtime wingers Bill Guerin and Chris Kunitz will benefit Crosby, who has gone a career-long four games with no points. He skated with wingers Matt Cooke and Ruslan Fedotenko, while Guerin and Kunitz moved to a line with Jordan Staal. (P-G)

I’m predicting that Cooke will actually score an ugly goal in the first period against the Bruins tonight, Bob Errey will praise him for going to the net and not being afraid to pick up the garbage and score the dirty goal and pick up the dirty goal garbage and literally take out the garbage in his house when the garbage bag is full of garbage, and Crosby and Cooke will remain together for three more games until everyone simultaneously realizes “Oh wait, this guy’s not a top line winger, why did be believe that for so long after his one goal?” and the lines will switch back.

Pascal Dupuis isn’t involved, so that’s a plus. But just so we’re all on the same page, repeat after me:

“Dammit, Fedotenko, you have to bury that!”

Watch Out, Ducks: Danny Bylsma Is Back

Empty Netters found this awesome Dan Byslma backhand goal against the Thrashers from 2002:

With the Pens’ depleted forward lines, think it’s time for DB to suit up for a game like Roger Dorn in Major League 2?

Wait, no, that was terrible. And could lead to Major League 3: Back To The Minors. Leeeeeeeet’s just stick with Chris Conner a little longer…

GAME TWO: Capitals 4, Pens 3 — As Gary Bettman’s Orgasm Subsides, Pittsburgh Stares Down A 2-0 Deficit

Hockey Quiz Time! And you don’t even have to go to Ask.com for the answer (or Google it after you don’t find it on Ask.com).

Q: If you make sure to cover one player in the NHL during one specific situation, which of the following should you choose?

A) Alexander Ovechkin one-timing the puck from the left hash.

B) Joe Thornton behind the net.

C) Mike Richards during your power play.

D) Mark Eaton always.

If you said “A”, you’re wrong! The correct answer is “OBVIOUSLY IT’S FRICKIN’ A DO YOU HONESTLY NEED TO BE TOLD TO COVER GODDAMN ALEXANDER OVECHKIN ONE-TIMING THE PUCK ON THE GODDAMN OFF-WING???” That was the answer we were looking for, caps included.

Sure enough, the Pens twice failed to cover an Alexander Ovechkin one-timer, the first coming on a spontaneous 3-on-2 in which no forwards got back and the defense gravitated towards Viktor “I’m Big And Try For About Nine Seconds A Game” Kozlov instead of the guy who’s scored 121 goals over the past two seasons, and the second coming on one of about 75,000 perfectly clean Capitals special teams face-off wins that resulted in a power play goal an embarrassing FOUR SECONDS into a man advantage.

Penguins, if we really need to go over whether or not you need to watch out for Alex Ovechkin one-timing a puck from the left side when you play against the Washington Capitals, then we might as well just save some time and skip directly to working on your golf swings. Golf swing tip #1: Do not jump into the water hazard with a plugged-in radio. Sounds self-explanatory? Yeah – so is keeping an eye on Alexander Ovechkin when you play the Washington Capitals. Jesus Christ.

– Sweet dive by Ovechkin on the Kunitz penalty though, huh? If Crosby had gone down like that and they showed the replay in the Verizon Center, all of D.C. would still be booing, plus more Caps fans would jump on the bandwagon to join in the booing, and Flyers fans would have reconvened in Wachovia to continue booing as well, and Crosby would be getting ripped on every blog on the internet right now including financial blogs, tech blogs, and this website. The refs barely impacted the game, though; a lot of the penalties for both sides just weren’t replayed on Versus at all and I never saw them, plus the Pens’ power play is bad (anyone else noticed this? I feel like I’m really alone on this one), and Kunitz got away with a really bad cross-check on Varlamov on the Pens’ third goal – “If you can’t score,” Badger Bob once never said, “at least cross-check the goalie in the head when it’s too late for the refs to care.”

– And that brings me to the power play…I feel like mentioning the power play in these recaps is like when someone during a roast finally gets around to the guest of honor, and everyone knows what’s coming… Yes, they scored twice tonight, but the second goal was a semi-irrelevant 6-on-4 goal following that missed cross-check to the Caps’ goalie, and until Dan Byslma stops leaving 4/5 of the power play unit on the ice for the full two minutes (Letang was getting 2-minute shifts tonight too – whoopeee!! Everyone is early-2000s Chris Pronger!!), we’re going to have to continue to put up with man advantages like the jamboree of failure following the Jurcina interference call. Then, the cherry on that shit sundae, Evgeni Malkin took the penalty that led to the go-ahead goal while at the end of an extended power play shift, presumably tired from watching Sergei Gonchar chase the puck behind his net a bunch of times.

– I’ve always felt that commentators overrate the importance of faceoffs to the outcome of a game, unless a team is absolutely, noticeably dominated on them. Tonight, the Penguins were indeed absolutely, noticeably dominated on them, losing 38 of 61 draws (61%) with no individual Penguin winning more than 42% of his draws. The Capitals’ faceoff wins also averaged 9.77 Clean-and-Easy points per draw, which is a stat I made up just now to emphasize how cleanly and easily the Caps won every single faceoff in every single remotely important situation.

– As much as I’ve complained about the Pens’ D, the Capitals did leave Crosby basically untouched on his first two goals. If the Pens had won this game, we’d likely be hearing more about the Caps missing John Erskine’s presence in front of their net. On the TSN coverage, at least, I’m pretty sure ESPN’s 30-second wrapup might focus on Ovechkin a bit more.

– Simeon Varlamov essentially outplayed Fleury for the second straight game (not a slight to Fleury so much as a credit to Varlamov); I don’t wish to revisit this argument here, as we’ll have plenty of time to fill during the offseason, but Varlamov’s success continues to taunt teams who draft goalies really highly or overpay for free agent netminders. Varlamov was a #23 overall pick; I’m not sure what Rick DiPietro, Kari Lehtonen, and Al Montoya are up to right this minute, but they’re not currently playing in the NHL Playoffs, and Marc-Andre Fleury won’t be for much longer barring a Pens defensive surge over four of their next five games. Tim Thomas (217th overall pick), Jonas Hiller (undrafted; international free agent), Cam Ward (25th overall), Nikolai Khabiboulin (thought to be washed-up) and Chris Osgood (was definitely washed up) are all still playing in the playoffs, for the record (and yes, Roberto Luongo, a 4th overall pick who was traded twice). But I digress.

– Was something going on with Max Talbot’s stick? He seemed to be hustling, positioning himself well, and blocking shots, but any time he tried to pass or stickhandle the puck would immediately, spastically turn itself over to the Caps, often in an impossible ‘Talbot just kept it in the Pens’ own zone when the Caps weren’t even trying to” way. Talbot also blocked two shots on the same penalty kill and neither one left the zone or went to a Penguin player. That sequence plus the weird bounce on the Steckel goal (who’s living up to his poster billing, by the way) had me scratching my head, at least in between fits of swearing at Gonchar and Orpik.

– Petr Sykora remains useless, injured or not, and is probably costing himself millions in free agent dollars with his noticable irrelavence.

– My pick of Pens in Six is still extremely mathematically possible. Yep…just call me “Nostradamus.” Seriously, call me on the phone right now and refer to me as “Nostradamus,” because I can foresee the future like Nostradamus claimed to have been able to, as evidenced by my ability to predict this series. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go plug in my radio and go golfing.

– And for good measure, the Pirates also blew a lead in the 8th inning and another one in the 9th to lose to the Brewers tonight.  And the Steelers traded Troy Polamalu to the Cowboys for a fifth round pick in 2012. C’est la vie.

Penguins To Not Fire Bylsma For At Least A Few Months Into 2009-2010 Season

Ray Shero today scratched the word “Interim” off of Penguins interim head coach Dan Byslma’s film noir detective Plexiglas office-door, officially naming him the team’s head coach and signing him to a multiyear contract. This move comes as a shock to the head of the Keep Pat Quinn Employed For Eternity Fanclub, but to no one else, including the other members of the Keep Pat Quinn Employed For Eternity Fanclub.

Terms of the deal, including how awkward the room got when Shero spent ninety minutes explaining what would happen if Byslma were to be fired by the Penguins long before his deal expired, were not immediately available.

In other coach-related news, the San Jose Sharks have fired Ron Wilson for the second straight year after another early postseason dismissal. Said the shocked Wilson, “They can do that? I coach the frickin’ Maple Leafs now. I guess they really needed someone to take the fall.”

GAME 5: Flyers 3, Pens 0 — Or Maybe We’ve Been Outplayed Four Straight Games?

You’re out drinking with friends on a Wednesday night, and it’s around 12, you’ve had a couple beers, but you’re getting ready to go home so you can wake up for work, then you get a text from another friend who’s clearly drunker than you are but implores you to come to some other awesome bar to meet up with a high school friend of yours you haven’t seen in years, and you end up saying “ah, screw it” and taking a cab there, drinking til 4, getting way drunker than you intended, then rolling into work at noon the next day unshowered and really obviously hungover (and still semi-drunk), only to learn that your boss had to leave for the west coast the night before and isn’t in the office, and nobody’s doing real work, so nobody cares. You traipse through the day without a problem and talk to your friend online about how your alarm was going off for an hour before you even noticed it, and how you woke up with a 90% uneaten box of White Castle chicken rings, and you both laugh for a long time but agree that it was probably a dumb idea and you shouldn’t do it again.

One week later, the exact same thing happens, and the next morning your boss happens to be out sick, and you still laugh about it with your friend and you’re not in any trouble, but it’s not as funny as the first time, and your headache is significantly worse than the first time and it doesn’t go away. Then you do it again two nights later, then again the following week, then finally one Thursday morning at 11:30, your cell phone has seven missed calls from your boss and it finally hits you — “Oh crap, I’ve been living like an alcoholic. I really can’t keep doing this.”

So here’s the Penguins, still up 3-2 after playing four straight subpar hockey games, but instead of looking at a 3-1 series and laughing about how lucky they’ve gotten with their two late power play goals in Game 2 and Fleury’s 45-save Game 4, they’re instead heading back to the road forced to stare at their complete lack of a power play and total inability to finish. Besides the first period in Game 5 (which ended 0-0), the Penguins have not outplayed the Flyers convincingly in a single period since Game 1, and with a chance to even the series for the Flyers in the balance, all notions of “the Pens just found a way to gut it out” are giving way to “oh wait, the Pens are playing crappy hockey and if they continue to play crappy hockey they will be beaten at the game of hockey.” A sobering loss makes things that much simpler.

Crosby had his worst game of the series, following up an inspired Game 4 by being an essential nonfactor on offense and directly causing the Flyers’ backbreaking third goal with a lame, predictable backhand pass to the point where three Flyers were stationed. Malkin fared better, at least managing to kick a goal in, but still ended up stuck in far too many 2-minute shifts that ended with him being tired and unable to battle for pucks. Satan’s upgrade over bizarro-Sykora was minimal, though he did blow two moderate scoring chances, Phillippe Boucher failed to clear an easy puck on the second Flyers’ goal and his shoot-first power play approach wasn’t nearly as effective as the “shoot it!” yelling home crowd would’ve loved for it to have been, and even the lengthiest puck-possession cycling shifts by the Staal line rarely led to a legitimate scoring opportunity in the last two periods.

I recall a friend of mine suggesting at the beginning of the playoffs that the Pens wouldn’t be able to maintain Dan Bylsma’s much-lauded aggressive style of play through the entire postseason, which I dismissed as ridiculous, because these are impeccably-conditioned professional athletes and the Pens’ newfound depth after the deadline would set them up ideally for a long Cup run. Instead, the Pens really have looked tired the past couple games, they haven’t maintained their aggression at all, they’re barely forechecking on the powerplay, they’re not making the Flyers’ defensemen work, they’re sure as hell not making Biron work (aside from the past first period, which Biron handled admirably), they’re not connecting on extremely simple neutral zone passes, and aside from the third line at times, none of the talent and chemistry that defined the past month of Penguins hockey has been prevalent in these past couple games. Yes, it’s the playoffs, so there’s theoretically going to be less room to make plays and uglier goals and a greater emphasis on special teams, but the Flyers ought to be just as tired as the Penguins and they’re simply not showing it anywhere close to as obviously, and the Pens are now undeniably fortunate to be on the brighter side of their 3-2 series.

So what to do in Game 6? I would say “more urgency on the power play” and “bury your chances,” but I’ve been saying that for three games and it hasn’t happened. Instead, let’s start with “stop being complete retards in the offensive zone,” same thing in the defensive zone, and from there, we’ll work up to the complicated stuff (e.g. completing passes, breakouts, ever getting traffic in front of the net, ever getting rebounds, hitting the net, not having every single shot blocked by three dudes, and so on.)

3/10/09: Penguins 4, Panthers 3 (SO)

The Penguins more or less dominated this game from beginning to end, and while I feel a bit greedy to be disappointed that they didn’t win this one in regulation even after trailing 3-1 going into the third, everything about this game indicated that the Penguins are a vastly superior team to the Panthers. The Pens outshot Florida an astonishing 52-20 including 18-5 in a third period that largely resembled a 20-minute Pittsburgh power play, and a series of spectacular saves by Tomas “I Get My Glove On Everything Including Shots Into The Stands” Vokoun singularly stole a point (and nearly 2) for the Panthers tonight.

The bad news for the Pens: Bryan McCabe and Nathan Horton, aka 40% of Florida’s power play and a solid 40+ minutes of Panther ice time, didn’t play tonight. Even more discouraging, the officials gave the Pens two absolute gift power plays (and six total power plays to Florida’s two) and Pittsburgh again pulled an 0-fer with the man advantage. The power play continues to be the Pens’ most baffling liability, and they’re running out of excuses; Crosby, Malkin, and Gonchar are all healthy, so are we now supposed to, I don’t know, lament the loss of Tim Wallace? I expect the Pens’ D to spastically break down every now and again (read: second Panthers goal), but how in the world can a power play with the Pens’ talent be ranked 25th in the league BEHIND THE NEW YORK ISLANDERS?

Also, for Pens fans who think they’ve been cursed with the only team in the NHL that doesn’t shoot the puck enough (sidenote: every fan of every team believes this), how about Richard Zednik’s non-shot in the final minutes of the third? He practically had the puck four feet from the goal line and tried to spin a pass to a winger who was below the net and in no position to physically shoot. It was like watching your Sega NHL ’94 player somehow pass the puck instead of shooting when you hit the C button; whoever was playing as the Panthers whipped their controller across the room and cursed out the computer for cheating after that one.

The good news: The Pens got two points after trailing 3-1 in a game that wasn’t Fleury’s best and certainly wasn’t the power play’s best, plus Sykora was still out, they totally avoided the cliche “letdown home game after a long road trip,” and they’ve now bombarded Florida with 97 shots in their last two meetings, which is absurd. They’ve won seven games in a row and are now 9-1-1 under Dan Bylsma.

- Malkin logged 27:33 of ice time, which is ridiculous for a forward, even in an overtime game. Also, attempting to poke-check Malkin in a shootout is apparently the only way to make him score.

- Tyler Kennedy looked outstanding tonight, and basically created the second Pens goal; having him on the third line is just a terrific depth-bonus.

- Why are NHL coaches always so stingy with their timeout? I thought for sure Peter DeBoer was gonna use his after the Pens got that third goal and the Arena exploded (not literally, yet), but he let the period proceed and the Pens almost scored about another 10 times. Though maybe he was trying to lure the Pens into a false sense of security to create that Zednik chance.

- Man, Jordan Staal is awesome and frustrating, but I know he’s had a generally positive game when I yell “YEAH! Way to get to the net, Staal!” more times than “THERE ARE NO HUMAN BEINGS WHERE THAT PASS WENT YOU DUMBASS.”

3/8/09: Penguins 4, Capitals 3 (SO)

With an astonishing 5-0 road trip, a feat never before accomplished in franchise history, the Penguins have stormed into… EIGHTH PLACE? STILL?? Do any teams in the East ever frickin’ lose??

That being said, today’s game was an important, if shaky, outcome for the Pens; they finally decided to show up against Washington and pulled off a win despite being outshot 32-22 and gift-wrapping two Capitals goals in uniquely spastic ways. I’d chalk it up as another plus game for Marc-Andre Fleury, who allowed nothing questionable despite 4 Capitals power plays and a series of barrages in the Caps’ 12-shot third period.

Bill Guerin had the courtesy not to yell “I’m a 38-year-old from the Islanders and I’m already better than every winger you had before last week!” during his FSN postgame interview, but his toe-drag wrister for the third Penguin goal and his setup of Crosby for the first were both legitimately gorgeous plays that I can’t imagine any other Pens winger (save Kunitz) making with regularity, including Petr Sykora.

Still, the Pens have a ways to go defensively before I can view their recent run (8-1-1 under Dan Bylsma) as anything that would translate into postseason success; the amount of effort they had to expound to build up a 3-1 lead versus the ease with which they blew it just isn’t a characteristic of a team that’s gonna control a seven-game series against a 1-4 seed from the East. Or, as my one friend’s text in the third concisely summed it up, “How the Fuck is a 2 goal lead in the third period so worthless for this team?” (capitalization on the F-word his, not mine).

I suppose the positive spin on the Pens’ current position in the standings is that if they’d gone 2-3 on the roadtrip versus 5-0, they’d probably be essentially done for the season right now. They’re still very much alive, they’re still playing better than almost every team around them in the East, Fleury’s finally strung a solid month together, and they’re heading home for a date against their new “The Standings Are Weird” archrivals, the Florida Panthers. Hopefully the fans embrace the newfound rivalry by making “David Booth is a whiner” signs and booing him every time he touches the puck. Wait, that won’t work…