It is sooo hard not to get waaaay high off this game.

We were simply magnificent. okay… maybe not magnificent but we played damn hard… all 60 minutes.

First period… kept them on their heels. No sogs for the birds for nearly 15 minutes! (the Pens have been having shooting issues despite having Sid and Geno leading the charge). We made sure they continued to have issues. Worried that poor Breezy would fall asleep back there. The Winnik/Malkin battles were epic… and our Beast continuously out worked their beast for the puck. The Pens looked disjointed, lethargic and were on their heels for much of this period. Fleury had his hands full but managed to keep us off the board, he looked cool and calm and was pretty much their best player for the whole 20 minutes.

Second period… the Pens found their feet and began to waddle across our neutral with a bit more authority. They caught up on sogs (not many were true chances, but they probably put more shots on net in this period than they have in total for this road trip). The Joker finally slipped past MAF (1 -0) but Satan worked his evil magic on a flukey high riccochet and answered our goal with one of his own. (1 -1 ) Captain Clutch roared back into action in the waning moments to snatch back the lead on a Rhino pass and we let the Pens roost at second intermission w/ that 2 - 1 weighing on their shoulders.

Third period… the birds returned with vengeance on the brain. They had fire and legs for the first half of this one but Breezy had other ideas. The big Russian repeatedly turned away all comers with authority. But the turning point of the game came when our DC fed Sykora a face full of board (hey Pete, nice performance btw, Carci deliberately went in from the side but Sykora somehow ended up face into the glass) and Sig got called for the dreaded delay of game, puck over glass. The Pens could have handed us our ass at this point, could have gotten their fans back into it with a timely marker here. (the Pen fans in the crowd did their best to get the boys fired up… to no avail) Our Pkers went into overdrive and pissed Satan off so badly he hooked Hanzal and then pulled off a 10 minute misconduct. The crowd visibly deflated and the Pens pretty much left the ice to the hard charging Boedker/Rhino/Porter phenomenon. Boedker snatched the puck from Goligosky and fed Rhino a beauty, the Rhino pretty much delivered Ports his first NHL goal tied in a red ribbon to make it 3 -1. IDK why they bothered to pull MAF in the last minutes, they had pretty much conceded the game. Even poor Malkin, who had taken the team on his shoulders and tried to put some guts back into them, couldn’t do anymore. Doaner put the chalupa goal in and we left the ice w/ a 4 - 1 victory, a chalupa for the fans and all 3 stars of the game.

Observations… this is not the 07 Pens… IDK who the hell these guys were. Staal was avoiding hits like most people avoid bill collectors. Malkin didn’t bother to hide his frustration and Sid the kid was nowhere to be found when the chips really went into the toidy.

Hockey is a game of opportunity some nights. Thankfully the boys recognised this and took full advantage of the Penguin team who have obviously lost their belief.

You have to absolutely adore Daniel Winnik. Has there been one shift in which the Beast has not been an epic factor? Fighting off 4 Pens while we completed our line change, creating open space every shift and just pure out workin and outmuscling and freakin out hustling everyone on the ice with him. Talk about leading by example.

NHL official recap

OdinMercer Summation for Pensburgh

The NHL show is coming to town… well , the poster boy for the NHL is coming anyway… and bringing his merry band of mischief makers (Geno and MAF ) with him.

We went through the post mortem of the Flames game so I am not going to start there. We know that the last time the Pens came here, it was close… a 1 - 3 loss isn’t too horrible considering that The Kid made the highlight reels against us previously and his boys took us apart 2 - 7 prior to that.

So what do we hope for? Well we hope that TGOs current juggle session pays off. The lines as of today look like:

Todd Fedoruk-Olli Jokinen-Shane Doan
Daniel Carcillo-Martin Hanzal-Peter Mueller
Kevin Porter-Steven Reinprecht-Mikkel Boedker
Daniel Winnik-Kyle Turris-Viktor Tikhonov

With Therrien being almost as much of a juggler as WG, its a tossup as to which lines will actually hit the ice. Rumor has it that Michel is splitting up Geno and Cindy yet again. Meaning we have 2 very nasty lines to worry about rather than a top line that we could have thrown the WTH? Line against (would have been interesting to see if the boys could work their containment magic against such a monster setup). You just KNOW I am going to ream Gretz and Co a new one if the WTH? Line has been broken up for nothing. Lets all hope at least one of those hard workin beasts scores.

Both teams are in a similar situation on the blue. The Pens have problems with Gonch and Whit out indefinitely and Big Hal Gill on the DTD trail. Gill is a monster back there and we had major problems with him, so here’s hoping he won’t be joining us. We have Jlov still out and Ken Klee coming to join us (hopefully meaning Hale will be sitting this one out). Klee isn’t the fastest thing on 2 skates but lets face it… fast isn’t really what we need right now. We need stable, reliable and safe. We need the guy who makes the good decision the first time. And I think Klee just might fit the bill.

IDK what the D pairings will actually shake out to be but I would think some combination of Klee/Yandle, Klee/Sauer or even Klee/Jovo might be seen. With Z being able to partner any thing on skates… there is a versatility that Klee can bring us, if he lives up to even the minimum expectation. (Z/Yandle is a no brainer, DMo/Sauer gives the same shut down capability as the Z/Sauer combo only w/ the added fillip of DMo’s slap shot) Whichever way TPTB decide to go, we’ll be seeing Klee rockin the #2 (that prolly won’t sit well w/ more than a few Ballard-die-hards). Time to let it go people, Bally won’t be comin back. (Doug Moss was recently the guest of the booster club and gave us this lil tidbit… They tried 3 ways from Sunday to do the Joker deal w/out losing Ballard. No dice from FLA.. we want the master of the hipcheck or no deal.) So suck it up and deal with it and don’t be givin Klee the business when he hits the ice.

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Apparently the Coyotes showed up for a hockey game but there was a swim meet being held. The best dive of the night goes to Armstrong! +10  Interesting game. Lets start with the bad/ugly and finish with the good this time around shall we?

Bad and ugly is that we got beat by the Pens…again. Ugly is that we got beat on special teams…again. Our PK had to work too hard all friggin game and at the tail end of a tough road trip that is a recipe for a distaster. Sad is that a team with so much talent resorted to petty diving and whining at the refs to get a couple of undeserved power plays. I never believed the hype about the whine and dive til I saw this game…Always figured it was sour grapes from team fans that lost to the Pens. Well now I know. The rest of the ugly penalties were our cross to bear for getting out of hand in the face of such wickedly strange reffing.

The good - we showed some mettle and hung tight with a much more talented team.

(gotta give props to my favorite baby Pen ’Geno’  and the most of the boys for their absolutely awesome level of talent)

We didn’t get slaughtered like the last outing. Bally, Donor and Bryz worked their tails off (Doan with the only goal and Bryz keepin the game from becoming a rout). Carcillo! stayed outta major trouble again.

But Bryz summed up the game the best: “We took too many penalties tonight,” Bryzgalov said. “It’s hard to get any scoring chances, hard to get going. We were in the box for half the game.”

Ah well, back to the den to lick our road wounds and get ready to kick the Kings around some more.

~photos from GhettyImages - Gregory Shamus/Contributor ~