Tampa Bay Forces Game Seven And The Pens’ Power Play Is Already 0-For-2 In It

Sometimes I have the tendency to be particularly verbose in my postgame recaps, mostly because right after Penguin games, I’m scrambling to crystallize my own thoughts on the game while simultaneously also conveying those half-thoughts and using my spare hand to respond to angry dad-texts. As an example of this verboseness (verbosity? Virtubosity with Denzel Washington?), I’m already rambling in this intro paragraph that I started with the intention to convey that for once, in my Recap of Pens/Lightning Game 6, I actually wouldn’t have to ramble on forever, because it was an exceedingly simple loss to analyze.

Now that I’ve wasted all this time describing how little time I’d have to waste before summarizing this game, let’s summarize this game in two easily digestible Dairy Queen Mini-sized fail desserts:

- Penguins Power Play goes 0-for-5, plus a (very) missed Penalty Shot.

- Fleury gives up 4 goals on 21 shots (Dwayne Roloson stops 27 of 29).

There ya go. Pretty much a perfect storyboard for a movie about this Penguin team losing a game, which would be a really boring idea for a movie for a number of reasons (though they could bill it as a Miracle reboot and call it Plausible?)

Rangers 3, Penguins 2 (OT): Pens Outshoot Opponents By 14 And Lose. You Know, The Usual.

The refs were incredibly biased against Pittsburgh in this one. Forcing the Pens to put their power play out six times? That’s just cruel.

The game was a pretty typical Pens’ D / Fleury loss, as they outshot the Rangers in every period and 39-25 overall but lost 3-2. Again, the Fleury goals were mostly defensible; the first one was on a wild scramble in front that Erik Christensen scooped up, the second apparently deflected off the Pens’ D and the post (though it still looked like Fleury was off his post on the short side a bit), and the third came after Michalek fell at the Pens’ blue line then Paul Martin dove to the ice in a failed attempt to break up a 2-on-1, for a nice tag-team suck effort by the Pens’ $9 million offseason acquisitions. I call the 25-shots, 3-goals result ‘Typical Fleury’ in that, while the goals were indeed possible to rationalize, on the other end of the ice, Henrik Lundqvist was absolutely lights-out for most of the game and stopped probably about 10 chances that would’ve been similarly defensible goals, which is a thing that supposed franchise goalies in the NHL do more than once every couple months.

I would rationalize that the Pens were lucky to get a point out of this game, given that Lundqvist was unbeatable for 57 minutes and the Pens’ power play reverted back to Insta-Suck^TM, but the Pens took the lead in the final minutes off a lucky Matt Cooke wrister that slipped through Lundqvist and was immediately followed by an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty to give the Pens a power play for the remainder of regulation, during which the Rangers scored an ugly shorthanded game-tying goal with under 90 seconds while the Pens were taking turns doing impressions of Lennie from Of Mice And Men in their own zone.

Fleury has allowed fewer than 3 goals just twice this season in 10 games (not counting his First Period exit in Phoenix), with both those games coming this past weekend against Tampa and Atlanta, and it’s been many a fortnight since we’ve seen a game where Fleury played like Lundqvist did last night. Still, the reverse game puck Monday went to Michalek, who continues to perform at a level where the only positive thing I can say about him is “He must still be hurt.” Awful loss.

Penguins 3, Hurricanes 0: I Think We All Saw This Brent Johnson Season Coming

This was one of those “simple analysis” type games, which is good, because I never feel like writing long posts on the weekend. I prefer spending the weekend relaxing by the beach, re-enacting Corona commercials by, like, pouring a mai tai on my cell phone, or whatever. I literally do that every single weekend. I’ve gone through hundreds of cell phones, but it’s totally worth…nah it’s not worth it. I really should stop ruining my cell phones with mai tais every weekend to prove how relaxed I am.

Whoops, I’m already rambling and making the short post long. The simple analysis:

1) The Penguins showed a lot of jump, particularly for a road game the night after a home game (though the ratio of Pens fans to Canes fans sounded downright Yankees-in-Tampaesque).

2) Brent Johnson played awesomely, and Cam Ward played not awesomely.

Johnson stopped 33 Carolina shots to notch his first shutout in a Penguin uniform, improving to 5-0-1 on the year. Ward, conversely, let in a Max Talbot goal after Talbot attempted to make a forehand move, lost the puck, and it slid in under Ward, then allowed a second goal to Pascal Dupuis on an unscreened, untipped wrister from the right circle.

The Johnson / Fleury disparity this season has been so glaring, it doesn’t require in-depth statistical analysis, but right now the numbers are just staggering:

Johnson: 5-0-1, 1.16 GAA, .960 SV%
Fleury: 1-5-0, 3.35 GAA, .863 SV%

At what point do we stop just automatically assuming Fleury will reclaim the starting job? That’s not a smart-assed rhetorical question, I honestly have no idea how this situation is going to play out over the next couple months. Brent Johnson has allowed 7 goals in six games – Bylsma has to keep starting him over Fleury for the foreseeable future, using Fleury only on their upcoming Friday/Saturday back-to-backs in the next two weeks, if at all. 12 games is a small sample size, and obviously we can’t throw Fleury under the bus after 6 games (and a bunch of bad games last year including several playoff ones ok I’ll stop this parenthesis has made its point). But Johnson’s certainly making it interesting.

By the way, that two-year, $600,000 / yr deal the Pens gave Johnson is looking slightly decent now, huh?

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 5, Flyers 1: If You Give A Million Penguin Power Plays A Million Chances, They’ll Eventually Produce Hamlet

Before the season, I have to admit, I wasn’t totally enthused about the Pens’ re-signing of Brent Johnson, and not because I questioned Johnson’s ability as a backup or his performance in ’09-’10, but because I wanted the Penguins to go after a backup who could potentially get hot for a few games and challenge Fleury – perhaps someone in the Johan Hedberg / Martin Biron price-and-skill range — rather than a very clear backup goaltender, albeit a reliable and inexpensive one like Johnson. Now, six games into the 2010-11 season, Fleury has started three games and lost all three, and Johnson has started three and won all three. Obviously it’s super early and nothing Johnson does now (or probably ever) would or should unseat Fleury as the team’s long-term #1 goaltender, but for the meantime, Johnson is pushing Fleury for that starting job much in the way I’d hoped a Hedberg-type would have, and at the exceedingly reasonable cost of a two-year $600,000 cap hit (while also pulling the Penguins from 1-3 to 3-3).

It’s entirely possible Johnson will start letting in Scott Gomez dump-ins along the ice from 30 feet and this entire newfound confidence in his ability to challenge Fleury while helping the Penguins win in the short-term will immediately dissipate, but at least for the first six games, Johnson’s sudden steadiness couldn’t have come at a better time. Ideally, he can keep this up for a while and split the next 10 starts or so with Fleury 50/50, and after some confidence-redeeming Fleury spot-starts, Fleury can go back to being their 80/20 starter and playing like it. Or maybe he’ll keep letting in Scott Gomez dump-ins along the ice from 30 feet and I’ll have to keep copying and pasting my “Seriously, I’m not just whining, Fleury is factually not playing well” posts.

As for the Flyers game itself, the Pens got 700 power plays and finally scored on a few of them, the Flyers had trouble finishing and basically folded in the third, and after the game Mike Richards said a bunch of stuff that would’ve been interpreted as bitchy whining if Crosby had said it (gets going about a minute in):

Maple Leafs 4, Penguins 3: Fleury Gets Outplayed By Random Goalie Yet Again

Before we get to our first Complaining About Fleury entry of 2010 (someone have the champagne ready?), let’s get the obligatory pre-complaining about Fleury stipulations out of the way so that our rational, fact-based complaints aren’t misinterpreted as baseless whining.

Obligatory Pre-Complaining About Fleury Thing 1: Fleury Wasn’t The Pens’ Only Problem In This Game

The Pens got badly outhustled in the first half of the first period, and were extremely lucky to end up with a lead in the first place, particularly with 2 of their best defensemen out and the replacements playing cluelessly, their power play alternately not shooting and shooting directly into defenders, and their second goal coming off a gift turnover right next to the Leafs’ net.

Obligatory Pre-Complaining About Fleury Thing 2: The Shots Were High-Quality Chances

One of the goals came off a deflection from the point, one was a clean side-to-side one-timer, and one was put in by a wide-open guy in the slot. None of the goals individually were “bad” breakdown-type mistakes by Fleury (like the Scott Gomez game-winner Saturday night), and reflected as much about the Pens’ defensive effort as they did about the goaltending.

With those two necessary components to any complaining about Fleury post out of the way, let’s complain about Fleury:

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:

Senators 4, Penguins 3 (Triple OT): I Am So Happy Right Now :) :) :)

Watching a triple-overtime loss is like watching The Passion of the Christ twice back-to-back and not realizing until the final minute of the second viewing that the movie totally sucks.

Still, the Pens totally dominated this game aside from the first ten minutes and most of OT1, finishing with a massive 59-44 edge in shots, and have dominated about 90% of the series since Game Two, a higher percentage than one could reasonably expect from any NHL playoff series, let alone a theoretically close-matched 4-vs-5 matchup. Marc-Andre Fleury posted his best game of the Pens’ entire season, easily, stopping several “well, there’s the game” tap-ins (and getting a little help from Matt Cooke on another sure goal).

Comparing this game to the Pens’ infamous multiple-OT loss to the Flyers or their Petr Nedved win against the Capitals and the results in those series is nonsensical; not only are these totally different players we’re talking about, but it’s also a totally different situation than the Keith Primeau series, which was 2-2 and heading back to Philly after the overtime backbreaker (plus Game 6 of that series was really close, it’s not like the Pens just folded after losing the OT game, even though it’s convenient to simplify the situation in retrospect by saying they lost because they were emotionally devastated.)

Also, Peter Regin is totally the new ’09 Claude Giroux — the dude had 29 points in 75 games this season, and now he’s by far the most dominant offensive player on the Senators, totally eclipsing the anonymous performance Daniel Alfredsson has turned in with his apparently unstoppable-from-50-feet shot. Let’s cover him! [Spoken in patronizing talking-to-puppy voice]

Not to jinx anything, but it’s almost inconceivable to imagine the Penguins blowing this series. You can’t view a 3-2 series as though Ottawa is still trying to dig out of a 3-1 hole, that’s mathematically flawed, but with the way the Pens have asserted themselves in this series when they’ve had to, I think they’ll put this thing away in Canada’s capital Saturday night. I’m gonna miss the game cause I’m doing a show, which actually might be good — either they win, and I’m glad it’s done with, or they lose and I will have saved myself hours of precious swearing breath. It’s win-win! (But seriously, win Saturday.)