DEAN JACOBS – OVATHLETICS.COM<\/p>\n
Rivalries will never get stale. \u00a0But for players, they begin to despise seeing the same old teams, players, faces, and fans. \u00a0Especially when you continually lose to the same team. \u00a0These feelings were being felt on both sides of the ice in every game the Penguins played this week. \u00a0Pittsburgh\u00a0has spent more than a week on the road, and the first two games of this week against\u00a0New Jersey\u00a0and Boston would be the 4th and 5th games of a 5\u00a0game road trip. \u00a0The final game of the week was at home against the always-pesky Carolina Hurricanes. \u00a0Let’s see how the Pens stacked up against these familiar foes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The first game of the week was\u00a0on Wednesday\u00a0against the hated\u00a0New Jersey Devils. \u00a0The Devils have beaten the Penguins in every meeting between the two clubs this season. \u00a0Because of Malkin’s absence, the lines were adjusted. \u00a0Pascal Dupuis\u00a0was on the first line with Ponikarovsky and\u00a0Letang. Going into the game, Dupuis was on a 5 game point streak. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It was a quick and great start for the Guins\u00a0on Wednesday evening. \u00a0After several good shots on goal within the 1st 5 minutes of the game, the Penguin’s early tenacity paid off. \u00a0Chris Kunitz\u00a0scored on a long\u00a0wrist shot\u00a0from a bad angle, which managed to get past Jersey’s goalie, Martin Brodeur. \u00a0The Pens led 1-0 until on a Penguin’s change, a blocked pass led to a quick breakaway and\u00a0Dainius Zubrus\u00a0smoked Fleury to tie the game at 9:09 of the opening period. \u00a0And all of a sudden the momentum was gone, but the Penguins tried not to let up. \u00a0The first period ended with the same score, 1-1.<\/span><\/p>\n Within the first 2 minutes of the 2nd Period, the Devils got their second goal on another poor pass and turnover, a pattern that had been happening all game, and now was painfully noticeable. \u00a0The Devils were reading the Penguins pass, picking the puck off in the neutral zone and developing breakaways from it. \u00a0Jersey had two of these situations in the matter of a minute, right after their opening goal of the period. \u00a0The first of 1 Jersey breakaways was a big save by Fleury, and the 2nd was a shorthanded intercepted pass for a goal by Patrick Elias to put the Devils up 3-1. \u00a0Things weren’t looking good for the Pens. \u00a0The next thing that happened, as a Penguin’s\u00a0Power play\u00a0was expiring, the Guins turned the puck over again leading to yet another odd man advantage for the Devils, and resulting in the 4th goal against Marc Andre Fleury, causing him to be pulled from the game in the 2nd<\/sup> Period. \u00a0Johnson came in and made some big saves immediately, and the 2nd<\/sup> period ended.<\/span><\/p>\n The 3rd period opened with the score 4-1 in favor of the New Jersey Devils. \u00a0The only remaining glimmer of hope for Pittsburgh came at 14:37 in the final period. \u00a0Ruslan Fedotenko took a shot and squeezed in the 2nd Penguins goal of the game. The puck went in off the knee of a Devil and behind Brodeur. \u00a0But that was it, though the Penguins continued to fight through a couple more hard-fought minutes of hockey, and several more chances for themselves, the game ended. \u00a0The finally score was 4-2 in favor of the Devils, and Pittsburgh had to part again from Jersey with another loss to go along.<\/span><\/p>\n Thursday night\u00a0showcased the Penguins traveling east to take on the\u00a0Boston Bruins\u00a0for the final game of the Guin’s 5-game road trip. \u00a0The game against Boston was hyped beyond belief, and the tension, anticipation, and excitement were in the air. \u00a0Earlier in the season against the Bruins,\u00a0Matt Cooke\u00a0had a hard hit on Boston’s best offenseman,\u00a0Marc Savard and knocked him out for the season. \u00a0In this rematch everyone was expecting “vengeance”. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The game got underway, and in the 2nd minute of the game there was already a fight between\u00a0Joe Thornton\u00a0and Matt Cooke. \u00a0Several minutes after that,\u00a0Tyler Kennedy\u00a0skated in to the Devil’s zone, basically uncontested and flicked a quick wrister past Boston’s goalie for the first goal of the game, and his first in the last 19 contests. \u00a0The Pens were up 1-0, but the Bruin’s remained on the hunt. \u00a0Through a few Power plays, a more than several good chances for each team, the 1st period ended with just 1 goal. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0The 2nd period began and ended with out much happening, but just as it was about to end, and as Boston just killed a Penguin’s power play; off a Letang shot, Alex Ponikarovsky scored with 15 seconds left, to give Pittsburgh the 2-1 lead. Then the 3rd<\/sup> period: At 14:46 in the 3rd, Michael Rupp got a jump on a puck in the neutral zone, skated in ahead of 2 defenders and ripped a shot for the 3rd goal of the game for the Pens, and all but sealing the fate of the Boston Bruins\u00a0on Thursday night. \u00a0Coming from 3 goals down in the final period just isn’t Boston’s “thing”. \u00a0Also, as he’s becoming known to do,\u00a0Marc Andre Fleury\u00a0bounced back and played well, a game after being yanked against Jersey, and shutout the Boston Bruins in this game. \u00a0The Pens as a team, dealt with the hype, handled the roughness, and played well in all phases to get the decisive 3-0 victory.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0To round out the week, the Penguins played a game\u00a0on Saturday afternoon. \u00a0They finally came home after 5 games, and were taking on the Carolina Hurricanes at Mellon Arena. \u00a0Carolina has the worst road record in the league, and another added bonus was the return of\u00a0Evgeni Malkin\u00a0after being out for 2 games, after being hit in the ankle with a Letang shot. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Even though it appeared the Pens were outplaying the Canes early on, it didn’t really matter. \u00a0After one bad pass, and a good bounce for Carolina, the Hurricanes had a 1-0 lead. \u00a0The momentum shifted towards Carolina, and the rest of the 1st<\/sup> period was theirs. \u00a0At the end of 1 it remained 1-0 Carolina. \u00a0The shots were 9-4 in favor of the Canes.<\/span><\/p>\n In the Second, again there was a lot of action and offense, but balanced with solid defense for both teams. \u00a0There was no more scoring until just 2 minutes left to play in the 2nd<\/sup>.\u00a0 The Penguins created a Power play for themselves, and as the advantage and the period were about to end, and after a lot of pressure but not a lot of shots, the Pens finally saw an opening and took advantage of it. \u00a0On a beautiful pass from Ponikarovsky to Jordan Stall, the Guins tied the game at 1. \u00a0Seconds later the period ended, and the game was now knotted at 1.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The entertainment level didn’t drop in the 3rd, and as time wound down with the score still tied at 1, the tension began to mount. \u00a0As it reached an apex, the stalemate was broken. \u00a0With under 7 minutes left to play, Evgeni Malkin, on his triumphant return, ripped a quick wrister past Carolina’s goalie, giving the Penguins a 2-1 lead, and their first lead of the game. \u00a0Penguin’s fans were hopeful. \u00a0Then with 4 minutes left,\u00a0Carolina’s Joni Pitkanen\u00a0wound up on a long\u00a0slap shot, and burnt it by Marc Andre Fleury, to tie the game again at 2.\u00a0 The Penguins spent basically the final 2 minutes of the game killing a penalty. \u00a0So the game went into Overtime.<\/span><\/p>\n I<\/span>n OT, both teams continued to make great chances for themselves, while both goalies still shut it all down. \u00a0The OT had it all: Firing shots, big blocks, hitting goal posts, flurries of offense. \u00a0Unfortunately it came to an end with less than 2 seconds left, when Jamie McBain beat Fleury on an odd-man break. \u00a0The game ended in favor of Carolina 3-2 in Overtime. \u00a0The Guins got a point, but a Win would have been better.<\/span><\/p>\n So the week ended on a not so good note, and over all Pittsburgh accrued 1 more loss than they did win, 1 and 2. \u00a0Losing to Jersey at the beginning of the week, and Carolina at the end, the Penguin only win came on Thursday against the Boston Bruins. \u00a0The Penguins\u00a0are still ahead of\u00a0New Jersey in the standings; so home ice in the playoffs is still looking good. \u00a0But the Guins have yet to beat the Devils this year, and they will probably have to play them in the postseason. \u00a0In the more near future, next week the Pittsburgh Penguins\u00a0take on the Redwings, Capitals, Flyers and Leafs\u00a0on Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. \u00a0After the 4 games next week, there is only 1 game left in the month of March, and 6 games left in the regular season. \u00a0For the Penguins, it’s crunch time, time to buckle down, focus, come together as a team, fix problems and maintain consistency heading toward the rapidly approaching playoffs. \u00a0The world is watching, hopefully the Penguins will stand up and prove themselves again, as the Champions they were last year. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DEAN JACOBS – OVATHLETICS.COM Rivalries will never get stale. \u00a0But for players, they begin to despise seeing the same old teams, players, faces, and fans. \u00a0Especially when you continually lose to the same team. \u00a0These feelings were being felt on both sides of the ice in every game the Penguins played this week. \u00a0Pittsburgh\u00a0has spent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-professional"],"yoast_head":"\n