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.

Sergei Gonchar Signs With Ottawa For Too Much Money, As Expected

Ottawa has signed Sergei Gonchar to a 3-year, $5.5 mil/year deal. Apparently, Ottawa has not seen this clip.

I’ve been up and down on Gonchar throughout his career, but this was obviously the right move for the Pens to let him go. He took a lot of flak his first year with the Pens for his poor play, and rightfully so, but his two-way play in the subsequent seasons after that led me to believe in retrospect that the Penguins were probably just a total mess that first year and it wasn’t Gonchar’s fault, when they randomly signed Gonchar, Ziggy Palffy, John LeClair and Jocelyn Thibault and threw them with Lemieux, Mark Recchi, and 18-year-old Crosby and asked Ed Olczyk — in his second year of coaching ever, at any level — to make it work somehow.

Gonchar regained his form as a top offensive defenseman in the league very quickly after that, but this past season — and perhaps not-coincidentally, ever since getting kneed by Ovechkin in the ’09 Playoffs — he’s proven to be a defensive liability slightly more often than is acceptable for a 24-minutes-a-game #1 defenseman, and while his offensive skill remains sharp as ever, and as pathetically as the Pens’ power play operated when he was out of the lineup last year, the Penguins cannot commit a three-year top-flight salary to a 36-year-old who’s already showed noticeable signs of decline.

Kris Letang and Alex Goligoski have a long way to go both offensively and defensively (people forget Letang scored precisely three goals last season, same as Mark Eaton), and handing the power play reigns over to them will be risky for a while, but not as risky as committing that much cap space to an aging player and ensuring that three of the Pens’ six defensemen possess limited defensive abilities.

Again, I’m sad to see Gonchar go, but I’m frankly surprised the Pens’ negotiations with Gonchar even lasted as long as they did, as the writing appeared to be on the wall for some time. I will miss his offensive contributions as badly as I’ll miss screaming his name sandwiched between two F-words.

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.)

GAME THREE – Penguins 4, Senators 2: Pens’ New “Give A Shit” Initiative Proves Effective

Heading into the playoffs, I proposed that the outcome of the Pens/Ottawa series would depend entirely on two simple yet excruciating questions -

Question #1: Will the Penguins resume giving a shit? And…

Question #2: Will Fleury play well? Not “not-retardedly”, I mean, actually “well”?

In Game One, Question 1 was a “kinda” and Question 2 was a resounding “Mother Of Everything Holy No”, and the result was an unsurprising-in-hindsight 5-4 Senators victory.

In Game Two, Question 2 began on shaky ground when Fleury let in a wrist shot from Carson Street .3 seconds into the game — but SHAME SHAME on you for questioning Fleury ever, you un-knowledgable peasants, even though he’s played crappy for most of the last four months and directly cost the Pens Game One – he won a Cup and is thus absolved from any wrongdoing until the end of time — but the Pens responded to Question 1 so forcefully, they essentially eliminated any further need for Question 2 by totally shutting down Ottawa offensively (except for one wide-open Jason Spezza chance from the slot, on which he missed the net). The Penguins won 2-1, outshooting Ottawa 31-20.

In Game Three, the Pens answered Question 1 with another resounding “Yes”, getting an early boost from a weak Alexei Ponikarovsky goal, and though Ottawa was again limited in terms of chances, Fleury played pretty well (the first Ottawa goal was on Brooks Orpik for leaving Mike Fisher alone in the nation of Canada, and the second goal was standardly “meh” on Fleury’s part, but the game was basically in hand by then). Penguins 4, Senators 2. Again, exactly the outcome you’d expect from those particular answers.

And so I again add, until the Pens play a team that’s better than them on paper — and really, that’s only Washington and a couple Western teams — their playoff fate will continue to be completely dictated by how convincingly they can answer these two questions. Two “Yes”es, and they win, two “No”s, and they lose, and if it’s one-and-one, it’s going into Overtime and can go either way (unless either the “Yes” or the “No” is followed by an exclamation point, in which case, it’ll probably tip the game in favor of that outcome).

There you have it. Hockey analysis just doesn’t get more in-depth than this. Also, Sidney Crosby’s pretty good.

After the jump, my thoughts on the Sutton non-suspension:

Preparin’ To Be Wrong: NHL Playoff Edition

Eastern Conference:

1) Washington over 8 ) Montreal in 5.

7) Philadelphia over 2) New Jersey in 7.

3) Buffalo over 6) Boston in 5.

4) Pittsburgh over 5) Ottawa in 6.

I honestly can’t remember an NHL playoff year where it was this difficult to picture anyone but one team coming out of a particular conference, but I’d be stunned if the Capitals lose a Best of Seven series before the Cup Finals this year. The Pens, Devils, and Sabres all look exceedingly vulnerable at the moment, but the bottom half of the conference is even worse, making for a number of toss-up-ish series as teams stave off a likely inevitable loss to the Capitals.

The Canadiens seem particularly well-built for an early playoff exit with their combination of teeny forwards and middling offensive defensemen, though I can foresee Jaroslav Halak stealing a game and keeping them in a couple before they’re escorted out, lasting just long enough for me to get annoyed by their lame-ass “Ole ole ole!” chant.

The Sabres aren’t great defensively and rely more on Ryan Miller than most consistently successful upper-seeds depend on individual goaltenders, but Boston’s offense is absolutely toothless, and I’m unable to picture a Bruins upset even in the most devil’s advocate-ish of cases.

Devils/Flyers is a toss-up too, partly because Philly’s dominated the Devils recently, partly because Jersey’s been just as inconsistent as the Pens down the stretch even against bad teams, and partly because the Prudential Center will be half-full of Philly fans. People will assuredly point out the Flyers’ shortcomings in net, but Martin Brodeur’s never been a steal-a-series type goalie, especially later in his career, and his recent playoff exploits have been downright alarming. Goaltending is still an edge for Jersey, but not big enough of one to dissuade me from making this my obligatory first-round upset pick.

Which brings us to the Pens and Senators:

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.

Senators 6, Penguins 2: Were Fleury And The Power Play Also Injured?

The Pens got killed last night, but what were we to expect? The whole team’s injured. Oh wait, Malkin, Gonchar, Talbot, and Eaton all ended up playing? Oh. So they just sucked. Alright, I can accept that.

The Pens got outplayed last night from the millisecond after Jordan Staal poked in a Pascal Dupuis feed to make it 1-0 up until the final buzzer. They somehow only got outshot 31-27, but it felt a lot worse, their powerplay was painfully bad (they finished 1 for 5 but the 1 was in the last couple minutes when they were already down 6-1), Fleury played his worst game of the season, allowing several goals from angles that protractors aren’t capable of measuring, and the team carried a general lack of urgency that doomed them from the moment they fell behind 2-1.

Also, complaining about the Penguins (or any team) not shooting the puck enough is hockey’s Kneejerk Fan 101, but the Penguins reeeeally didn’t want to shoot the puck last night (except Dupuis, and if he’s the only one firing the puck, you are the worst team in the NHL). The telltale sign that the Pens aren’t shooting the puck, usually, is when they have a game where Crosby, Malkin, Staal, and Gonchar all keep trying to thread passes to other players in worse shooting positions than themselves, and this kept happening again and again; it’s bad enough that the people Malkin passes to will be, by definition, crappier finishers than him, but it’s even worse when it’s a risky pass and it’s to a dude who isn’t even in a better position to score than the person passing. Hopefully, the scoreboard at the end of the night will be enough of a cartoony slap across the faces of the Pens’ stars to wake them back up for Saturday night.

Other thoughts:

– Daniel Alfredsson looked as good last night as I’ve seen him in the last three seasons. He’s always been right on that fence between “Consistently Good Player” and “Superstar,” but last night he played like the latter.

– The Senators fans loudly booed every single penalty call against the team. Christ, Ottawa, you can relax — you’re not frickin’ Montreal, you’re allowed to derive pleasure from live hockey events.

– If there’s one positive to take out of the Senators game, at least the Penguins never traded anyone for Jonathan Cheechoo. Man, that dude has nothing left — he’s fallen all the way to the status of “Random Roleplayer Who Breaks Scoreless Drought Against Penguins.” Yeesh.

– In fairness to the Pens, they were at the end of a long road trip. Meaning, the trip from Pittsburgh to Ottawa.

Dany Heatley Requests Trade After Car Wreck Of A Season

Dany Heatley has reportedly asked the Ottawa Senators for a trade, but before we get all “spoiled fan wishful thinking”-ey about the prospects of Heatley netting 55 goals on Crosby’s wing, there’s this sad trombone paragraph:

Heatley, 28, has four seasons remaining on a six-year, $45 million contract that he signed in 2007. He might be difficult to move as he’ll cost $7.5 million against a team’s salary cap next season.

Yyyyeah, so basically, he’s well out of the Pens’ price range — even if they scrounge up enough to trade for him, which is highly unlikely in itself, or if Ottawa were willing to eat a year of Sergei Gonchar’s deal, the Pens basically wouldn’t be able to dress a fourth line with Heatley’s salary dragging down their cap number, and because he’s locked in for four more years, we can’t even delude ourselves with the arrogant notion that he’d take a discount to play alongside Crosby, which clearly sooo many wingers were willing to do last offseason.

The upside? Barring a huge trade return for Heatley, a major free agent signing, or the overnight maturation of Nick Foligno into a 35-goal-scorer, Ottawa is already shaping up to be a playoff nonfactor in 2009.  If they’re desperate, though, I seem to remember hearing that Miroslav Satan’s still got “30 goal potential”…