Flyers 3, Penguins 2: The Streak Was Bound To End Eventually But Screw This Game Anyway

I had a sinking feeling the Pens were gonna lose tonight, but that’s not worth any Nostradamus points, cause I had the same feeling before the recent Devils and Maple Leafs games and the Pens won both of those in regulation. Really, they were destined to lose eventually, and 12 straight wins is still incredibly impressive, so I’m not that annoyed…

Dammit, Flyers.com homepage, I’m really trying not to get mad at you guys tonight.

Basically, there’s not much to say tonight other than the Pens got slightly outplayed by a team that’s currently even deeper than they are offensively and defensively. I wish that weren’t the case — I wish I could point to a specific breakdown or an unlucky bounce or two or a blown call here or there (there were several, but ended up mostly a wash) and say that the Penguins should’ve won so I can sleep tonight feeling superior, but really, the Flyers just did a little more than the Pens to win the game, gave up almost no significant scoring chances 5-on-5, and came away with the win.

Deryk Engelland has played mostly ok in his starts this season, but he looked slow and out of place tonight, finishing the game with only 9:48 of ice time — either Dan Bylsma saw what I saw and benched him, or Engelland had an undisclosed injury. The Engelland/Lovejoy pair has been mostly passable throughout the season, if at times unspectacular, but if the Penguins are gonna make a move at the trade deadline in a couple months, I can foresee them going after a Jordan Leopold / Phillippe Boucher type veteran defenseman to fill the 6th D spot. Right now it’s not a huge issue, but Engelland and Lovejoy still have a ways to go to prove they won’t be playoff liabilities, and if a late-season blue line injury forces both of them into the Pens’ lineup, particularly with Goligoski’s defensive deficiencies already evident, the Pens will suddenly face a glaring hole.

Malkin looked decent in his return, an assessment which I don’t intend to sound disingenuous as he provided both Penguin goals, but he was forcing constant inessential passes through traffic and turning the puck over too frequently, and his retaliatory penalty in the Third led to the Flyers’ go-ahead goal. He still has a ways to go before I (and the other less-forgiving Pens fans) will completely set aside my current Malkin Frustrations^TM. I realize I just used the phrase “ways to go” twice in the same short recap, but it’s late and I’m tired and the Pens just lost to the Flyers in a boring game and we can all deal with it.

The Flyers assume First Place in the Eastern Conference for the time being, though they’re also one of the few teams in either conference that’s been essentially 100% healthy the entire season (besides Michael Leighton, who is unquestionably a crucial component of Michael Leighton’s family). This isn’t really a knock against their success over the past month and a half, just a reminder that the rest of the conference won’t necessarily be as far behind them talent-wise come Playoff time, particularly if Jordan Staal returns to his previous level of utility and Danny Briere suddenly remembers he’s Danny Briere and misses the next three years.

Lightning 5, Penguins 3: When You Play Tampa, You Just Have To Contain Teddy Purcell

My brother, a hockey fan who despises the NBA even more strongly than I do, has long made the argument that part of the NHL’s struggle for publicity stems from how fundamentally different the roles of its stars are from those of the stars in the NBA. If you attend a Lakers game, you know almost unequivocally that Kobe Bryant is going to score 20 points with a shot at 30 or 40, and he’ll have the ball in his hands on nearly every possession throughout the entire game, whereas if you attend a Penguins game — such as the Pens’ unimpressive 5-3 clunker in Tampa Wednesday night — you very plausibly might see Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin manage just one secondary assist between them.

The disparity in star power between NHL players and NBA players isn’t solely a factor of the sports’ differing popularities or the way that they’re promoted, but also results from this primary, fundamental difference within the sports themselves. If you’ve never seen a basketball game, you’re still not going to watch a Heat game without noticing LeBron James; if you’re not a serious hockey fan, though, you very well could’ve missed Sidney Crosby Wednesday night.

I’ll save the finer points of this argument for another day, but it’s a nice, general, roundabout segue into my minorly disgusted reaction to the Pens’ loss to Tampa, in which Sidney Crosby played possibly his worst game of the year, managing 3 shots and a Minus-1, providing absolutely zip on the power play, and turning the puck over with Cutleresque frequency. The Pens managed to lose a game in which they scored two shorthanded goals on the same Tampa power play, got goals from Matt Cooke, Pascal Dupuis, and Craig Adams, and managed to chase the clueless-looking Mike Smith just 12 minutes into the game.

Fleury did his part too, allowing 4 goals on 30 shots (.867 SV%) including the first shot of the game for his second straight start, this time on a harmless wrister along the ice from Tampa’s most dangerous sniper, Dana Tyrell. The equally unstoppable Teddy Purcell added a goal on an untipped wrist shot from above the circles (the Pens had a tough time containing the notorious -Ell Twins), Vinny LeCavalier threw an unstoppable power play one-timer past Fleury to tie it, and Marty St. Louis forced a breakaway through two Penguin defenders and chipped the winning goal over a failed Fleury poke-check. Stir in another sweet 0-for-5 on the Pens’ power play and voila! A regulation loss after being up 3-1.

Jordan Staal is allegedly slated to return Friday against Philly. If his weight still isn’t up to par, he has my permission to eat Mike Comrie.

Penguins 4, Predators 3 (OT): Sidney Crosby Is Good At The Sport Of Hockey. Yeah, I Said It.

That’s what Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin look like when they’re on top of their game. The Predators game was, I mean, not that embed. That embed is what Pascal Dupuis looks like on an odd man rush.

As much as we love to dissect Letang’s inopportune pinching and Fleury’s psyche and the forwards’ defensive zone faceoff coverage and whatever other details linger whenever Crosby and Malkin aren’t ridiculous and the Penguins lose a game by a goal and the lingering emptiness prohibits us from just copy-pasting “They have Crosby and Malkin, they’ll be fine” and counting it as postgame analysis, in a victory like tonight, that’s precisely what I’ll do. Crosby and Malkin simply willed the Pens to two points tonight.

Fleury played well, and Pascal Dupuis’ stick and Kris Letang’s slapper and some lucky bounces all helped, but this was a game the Penguins would’ve lost if either Crosby or Malkin had dropped a B+. Crosby’s first goal exploited a pretty glaring mistake by Pekka Rinne, who was cheating to his left expecting a pass, and both Malkin’s goal and Crosby’s second goal came off super-fortunate rebounds, but to borrow from my “Sportscaster Cliche” Page-A-Day Calendar, they were both textbook examples of great players creating their own luck. Eric Tangradi goes straight to the net on every single shift, but he still only has one goal; Crosby and Malkin scored tonight by being intuitive, seeing the rebounds before they happened, and fighting to get the right spot. Malkin’s effort on the second Crosby goal was so Hurculean, it made me unselfconscious enough to actually type the adjective “Hurculean”.

Also, before the game I joked to my friend about how much I hated all those damn Predators fans and couldn’t wait for the huge Penguins / Predators rivalry game to shut them up, but then the game actually did end up being really physical and rivalry-seeming, in addition to being extremely entertaining from a skill stand point. With the win, the Pens improve to 5-3-0 overall and 3-0 on the road, and they’re now tied with the Islanders for the most points in the East, even though they’ve played 1-3 more games than every other team (really gotta squeeze in as many games as they can before their three best defensive players come back). Hopefully they can keep it up with only… let me check… 930 games left to play.

Penguins 5, Senators 2: Penguins Stick It To JUDAS Gonchar

Has a player ever left the Penguins on more amicable terms than Sergei Gonchar? He and the Penguins mutually agreed to part ways after five productive seasons and a Stanley Cup, then he signed with a conference nonrival for an excellent salary, and the Penguins welcomed him back with a highlight reel at Consol, a standing ovation from the fans, and Penguin players tapping their sticks on their boards. I was half expecting Matt Cooke to line Gonchar up for a blind-side hit, then at the last second yell “SURPRISE!” and flip lights on and the rest of the Penguins would all be gathered in the conference room with party hats and a “55″ cake and everyone would hug and Gonchar would give an awkward thirty second speech then they’d eat and slowly disperse back to work.

That didn’t exactly happen. What did happen, though, was a third straight Penguins victory, keyed off a 3-0 Penguin lead after a wide-open First Period. The Pens managed 17 shots in the First and allowed 12, but still emerged up three goals after a slick Mike Comrie feed to Mark Letestu for his team-leading fourth goal, a bubble hockey-esque bounce off the end boards that Crosby hand-eye-coordinated behind Brian Elliot, and a faceoff that Ottawa cleanly won in their own defensive zone that they couldn’t corral, ended up on net, and was knocked in on the rebound by a fully outstretched diving Malkin.

GAME SIX: Canadiens 4, Penguins 3 – Pens Keep Dream Of Horribly Choking Alive

Well, this isn’t good. Four games into this series, it still seemed inconceivable that the Pens would lose the best of seven, as they clearly outplayed and outchanced Montreal in almost every one of the first 12 periods of the series aside from the first 10 minutes of Game Three and the third period of Game Four, and even though the Capitals similarly outchanced the Canadiens in their series and came up short, any just law of averages would dictate that a team couldn’t get badly outplayed 14 games in a row and win eight of them.

Games Five and Six, on the contrary, have basically been even hockey games, with the Canadiens even outshooting the Pens in Game Five and Pittsburgh needing a dominant Fleury performance to sneak away with a win in regulation, and not surprisingly, the Canadiens won Game Six and came darn close in Game Five, making Game Seven look like a lot more of a toss-up than one might have expected one week ago.

I’m worried about Fleury again, and not because he played terribly in Game Six (he didn’t), but precisely because he didn’t play terribly — he’s shown a remarkable ability to bounce back from terrible performances with stellar performances, but what about when he plays totally mediocrely, as he did in Game Six? He wasn’t floundering, and didn’t give up a harmless dump-in shot from the left circle, but he also didn’t play “well”, allowing 4 goals on only 25 shots, including two shots from just inside the blue line (albeit on a one-timer and a serious screen, respectively). Will that hamper his ability to have a miraculous bounce-back game to allow haughty sportswriters to rip on us poor mongoloid fans for pointing out when Fleury plays badly?

The Pens’ D often shoulders some of the blame for Fleury’s weaker outings, but in Game Six, they were exceptionally responsible, with Kris Letang setting the tone early by turning the puck over just outside the Pens’ blue line and immediately falling down to give Montreal a clean 2-on-1 and an early lead. The Canadiens’ fourth goal was just a jamboree of failure on the Penguins’ part, and in between, the Pens’ D turned the puck over far too often, played far too tentatively with the puck, and despite Letang’s power play goal and Gonchar’s late tipped-in slapper to cut the lead to one, the defense corps was far too shaky in both zones to loosen the Canadiens up from their “All five dudes collapse to the net at all times” defensive strategy, which will continue to work as long as Goligoski, Leopold, Eaton, and Orpik (and more often than not Gonchar and Letang too) can’t hit the net or have their shots not extremely blocked.

I also wouldn’t be completely surprised if when the Pens’ season ends, they reveal that Crosby was playing with an injury. He really just doesn’t look like himself, and it’s not like he’s flying around playing awesomely and the Canadiens defenders keep perfectly checking him off the puck or diving to deflect his passes (though I give credit to Hal Gill for his impressive Crosby-holding highlight reel that Versus runs every game to compliment his defense), but Crosby’s been less impactful than usual for a far longer stretch than we’re used to seeing. I realize things tighten up in the playoffs and it’s tougher for individuals to dominate, but no matter how well the Canadiens’ D is playing, Sidney Crosby just doesn’t go six game stretches with only one tip-in goal. I’d like to confidently exclaim “Oh he’ll be fine,” but my thoughtless, general optimism heading into this series has given way to cold indifference, as every stretch of every period continues to fall more and more squarely into the toss-up category.

Home ice doesn’t impact Game Seven in any way, either, as much as people who confuse the NHL with the NBA continue falsely believing it does. While it’ll be nice to get the Pens away from the whiny boo factory that is the Bell Centre, they also played their worst game of the series at home in Game 5, and played terribly against Ottawa at home in Game 1 of that series then failed to close out a beaten-down Senators team at home in Game 5, so I’m not drawing any false confidence from the location of this contest. The suckiness of the Pens’ D and Fleury’s proneness to astonishing letdowns cannot be constrained by geography.

So like I said, Game Seven is a toss-up. The Penguins should win if Crosby plays well and Malkin plays well and Fleury plays well and the third line chips in a goal and the penalty killing stops being stupid and the power play continues miraculously being not stupid. But am I confident more than two of those things will happen at the same time in this bewildering series? No, I’m not. If I had to bet, I’d take the Pens, but I’m sitting about 53-47 on this one, and in a one-game winner-takes-all scenario, that’s not a good thing.

8 Obvious Observations Heading Into Game 3

Pens/Canadiens Game 3 is tonight. Skipping the long winded “there’s no reason the Pens shouldn’t crush this team” Game 2 recap, here are 8 very obvious things I’d like to see happen in the series:

1. Crosby needs to score.

2. Malkin needs to score.

3. Fleury needs to play better. He’s quietly allowed 6 goals on 52 shots this series for a Save Pct. of .885.

4. Guerin and Kunitz need to do anything, ever.

5. Brooks Orpik needs to not leave dudes open in the slot then take pointless holding penalties behind the net, directly resulting in two goals.

6. Alexei Ponikarosvky has been playing more noticeably this series than he did against Ottawa, but it’d be awesome if he ever found himself in the same zipcode as the scoresheet.

7. Hal Gill needs to not be allowed to randomly bear hug dudes.

8. Halak? Whatever. Fucking score on him.

Penguins Vs. Canadiens: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Confident

I find every reason to be worried about the Penguins at all times. This prevailing mindset exists in all fans of all sports teams, regardless of the quality or recent performance of that team, for two main reasons:

1) As a devoted fan to a particular team, one is uniquely privy to that team’s subtle weaknesses.

Commentators and casual Penguin-watchers might remark that Marc-Andre Fleury is one of the best clutch goaltenders in the NHL, or that the Pens are loaded with offensive firepower on the blue line with Gonchar, Letang and Goligoski, and they wouldn’t be wrong. People who watch and root for the Penguins on a nightly basis, however, know that Fleury is capable of going into “Fleury…what??” mode and letting in unscreened wrist shots from any concessions stand on any given night, and that Gonchar, Letang and Goligoski all occasionally forget how to play the sport of hockey and become unable to stand in front of other human beings while in their defensive zone. These concerns aren’t extreme pessimism on the part of fans; they’re legitimate aspects that we notice and worry about because we’ve seen them happen hundreds of times.

2) Fans are always reserved about praising their own teams too highly for fear of jinxing them by celebrating prematurely.

Part of this is in a joking, supernatural “don’t want to jinx them!” kind of way, which people don’t actually believe (but dammit, we’re not deviating from it in the playoffs), but on a more practical level, fans also don’t want to appear overconfident and gloat and then have their team ultimately lose, which would make the situation far less digestible on all levels. By curbing our expectations in advance, we give ourselves an emotional safety net if our team loses, rather than the devastating free-fall we’d experience if we were positive the team was going to win and they didn’t.

Both of these reasons are completely legitimate and almost completely universal — you want to scream at Yankee fans when they get nervous when Mariano Rivera comes into the 9th inning of a game when the team’s up 3-1 in the playoff series, but that’s just what fans do. Who wants to be confident and rational about their own team? Douchebags, that’s who. Also rational people, I guess. No, only douchebags. There – proved it!

My point is, I am very much one of these always-worried people. I am extremely one of these people. And yet, having explained in depth all of this jargon about all fans making themselves worried at all times, I am extremely, almost dangerously confident about the Penguins heading into the Montreal series, and here’s why:

OLYMPIC HOCKEY ROUNDUP: Pavol Demitra’s Ridiculous Shootout Winner Against Russia

Before we get to a couple quick points about Olympic Hockey so far, check out ( / rewatch) this clip of Pavol Demitra’s shootout winning goal in Slovakia’s 2-1 win over Russia last night (click on the pic below to watch – Demitra comes on at 1:55, but be sure to check out the amazing super slo-mo at 2:41):

Some thoughts on the first few Olympic games:

– During NBC’s postgame of Canada’s shootout win over Switzerland, one of the analysts (forget who) waxed poetic that Mike Babcock’s decision to re-use Crosby in the shootout was his statement to Crosby that “you’re gonna be the one who has to carry us to Gold.” I understand that Crosby’s become the personification of Canada’s ravenous Gold medal addiction, but the idea that Crosby or anyone else has to carry the goddamn Canadian Olympic Team — a squad comprised of 15 or so of the world’s top 25 players — is hilarious, and foreshadows exactly how bad the anti-Crosby firestorm is gonna be if this team loses in the Elimination Round.

For this reason, while I’d love to see the U.S. go all the way, I’m thinking it’d just be a lot easier on all of us if Canada wins so we don’t have to deal with a 3.8 million square mile chunk of land pissed off at the Penguin captain for the rest of eternity. The East Coast of the U.S. is plenty big enough.

Moving along…

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).

Senators 4, Penguins 1: Pens Do Nothing, Somehow Lose To League’s Hottest Team

Only two main observations about last night’s semi-anemic Penguin loss:

1) The gameplay and chances were largely even throughout pretty much all three periods, but in the simplest sense, Brian Elliot just outplayed Marc-Andre Fleury. Fleury seemed to have trouble covering pucks all night — on the FNS broadcast, Bob Errey continually pointed out specific clips in which Fleury appeared to be uncomfortable with his injured hand — and seemed lost on a couple pucks that hit the post behind him and an early bizarre Jason Spezza chance that trickled wide through the crease. Elliott, meanwhile, stopped everything after Malkin’s game-opening goal early in the first, including a handful of legitimate scoring chances and a couple nearly-competent power plays. Fleury wasn’t awful, but Elliott was clearly better.