8 posts tagged “sergei gonchar”

You'd think, with the unbalanced schedule, that the Penguins would have played a division game by now. The NHL's scheduling computer operates on some complex calculus that mere mortals can't possibly understand, however. Thus, we get only two Atlantic Division games in October, but burn off two Western Conference games, and both Montreal home dates, in the first month of the season.

In hindsight, the tone was set before the teams even took the ice. Mellon Arena's crappy sound system was acting up again, and PA announcer John Barbaro's voice was creating tons of feedback. He got through the Devils starters and the scratches before stopping to give the audio engineers a chance to figure things out. As a result, he ran out of time to announce the referees, linesmen, and off-ice officials before the intro video started.

I think they were offended.

Right off the opening faceoff, Gary Roberts and David Clarkson got into a scuffle near the benches. Clarkson dropped his gloves, which should have earned him an unsportsmanlike conduct call, but the refs let it slide. In fact, the refs were letting things slide for most of the first period. The first penalty wasn't called until 16:28.

Most of the first looked like typical Penguins hockey: Soft defense and big rebounds from Marc-Andre Fleury. Meanwhile, New Jersey was (you might want to be sitting down for this) attacking! Instead of numbing teams to death with The Trap, new coach Brent Sutter has the Devils playing a more aggressive, up-tempo game.

You see where this is headed, don't you? Two goals by New Jersey before the period's half done.

First, Jay Pandolfo wristed home a rebound to make it 1-0 Devils. Fleury was down to his right to stop a wrap-around attempt, and made it across to the opposite post while the puck was bouncing around in the slot, but didn't get up in time to stop Pandolfo from roofing it.

About three minutes later, the Devils got a slow, awkward 2-on-1, and Clarkson fed John Madden for a slap shot that made it 2-0.

Then the most famous facial hair in Pittsburgh made its presence felt. The Pens battled through the neutral zone, and Ryan Whitney gained the blue line, slowed to look for options, and saw Max Talbot driving the net through the left circle. Whitney threaded a perfect pass onto Max's tape for an easy tip-in behind Martin Brodeur. 2-1 Devils.

Not long after, Danius Zubrus was called for slashing, and the Pens power play went to… um, we are on a power play, right? The first unit didn't seem to think so. After a minute of sloppy puck control, Coach Therrien sent the second unit over the boards, and they got the job done. Petr Sykora set up Sergei Gonchar for a blast from the center point, and Roberts deflected it home to tie the game 2-2. A late penalty on Madden gave the Pens most of a power play to start the second.

The first PP unit got straightened out. Evgeni Malkin dished it Sidney Crosby at the right point. Crosby then demonstrated how difficult it is to knock him off the puck, as he skated along the boards, behind the net, and all the way to the left half-boards, before he passed it to Gonchar at the center point again. No deflection necessary this time, and the Pens have a 3-2 lead.

At this point, the Pens were starting to look good. They had some good cycles in the Devils' zone, and Fleury seemed to be settling down. Then Jarkko Ruutu got a reputation call for hooking. Talbot had a good breakaway chance on the penalty kill, but his backhand shot was easily stopped by Brodeur.

Then Sydor got called for hooking just after the Ruutu penalty expired. Seems that the refs had made some adjustments in the locker room, too, and started calling things tighter, right? Travis Zajac converted on the Sydor penalty with a sharp-angle wrist shot over Fleury's glove hand to tie it again, 3-3.

And then things started to go downhill.

Another tight hooking call, this one on Sykora, killed a breakaway chance for Sid. The Pens killed that penalty, then went right back to the box again, as Recchi was called for a ticky-tack holding call on a hit that looked like it would have started a good forecheck. The Pens killed that one, too.

Then somebody greased the skids.

A nice lead pass by Brooks Orpik sprung Malkin and Jordan Staal on a two-man breakaway during a line change. Behind the play, a scrum developed in front of the benches. With the line change in progress, both teams ended up with too many men on the ice. By most counts, the Pens and Devils each had at least 7 skaters on the ice. A linesman can whistle a play dead for too many men, but they were tied up in the scrum. No on-ice official made a move to stop play before Malkin beat Brodeur to make it 4-3 Pens. No, scratch that.

The refs made two bone-headed decisions. First, they retroactively called the play dead before the goal was scored. A referee has the ability to call a play dead if, for example, the puck crosses the goal line as he's raising his whistle to his mouth. That's a fair cop. Who wants a hockey game to be decided by the reaction time of a ref's whistle hand? But you can't tell me that the three or four seconds it took for the play away from the bench to develop counts as "reaction time."  How far back can a ref go before deciding, "Yeah, I should have blown the play dead there"? Then, to compound the error, they only called too many men on the Penguins!

By the way, did I mention that the scrum started because Sid was face-washed down to the ice, in full view of every human being not wearing an orange armband, and no penalty was called.

Therrien couldn't really argue with the refs because 16,990 paying customers were booing at the tops of their lungs. For the entire TV timeout that followed. I couldn't begin to tell you what the trivia challenge was that night because every time they turned up poor Val Porter's mic so she could be heard over the boos, the boos just got louder.

The Pens had almost killed the penalty when the refs struck again. With three seconds left on the too-many-men minor, two things happened simultaneously:

1. Max Talbot took a high stick to the face
2. Sergei Gonchar tapped somebody on the leg with his stick.

Pittsburgh penalty, number 55, Sergei Gonchar, two minutes for hooking.

More screaming from the Mellon Arena faithful.

It looked like Sykora, who had been serving the bench minor, would save the day. He picked up the puck in the neutral zone as he exited the penalty box, and got another breakaway chance on Brodeur, but his wrist shot was gloved down.

On the ensuing faceoff, New Jersey had six skaters on the ice as the linesman was ready to drop the puck. Instead of calling a too many men or delay of game penalty, the refs allowed the extra skater to return to the bench. The last three fans who didn't think the Pens were getting screwed finally conceded.

Rock bottom came at 14:48 of the second.

With the Devils collapsing around the net, Brian Gionta crashes into Fleury, then Whitney crashes into Gionta. Gionta figures that the best way to get up from the fall is to push himself up from Fleury's chest. Meanwhile, Fleury, pinned to the ice by an opposing player, is in no position to find the puck. It's loose in the crease and in full view of the ref, who is so intent on the puck, that he doesn't see that Gionta is on top of Fleury, just a few millimeters to the left of the puck. Zajac pokes it home to make the score 4-3 Devils.

Fleury snaps.

As soon as he's free of the dogpile he was at the bottom of, he jumps up, throws the net off its moorings, and charges the ref who called the goal. The linesmen have to jump in to restrain him.

Michel Therrien snaps.

He's at the front of the bench, door open, screaming at anybody and everybody in black and white stripes.

Mellon Arena snaps.

Beers, programs, obscenities, and promotional mouse pads come raining down onto the ice.

In 2:24 of game time, the referees went from merely calling a bad game to losing all control of the game. In the end, Devils defenseman Andy Greene may have stopped a full-scale riot. By committing a puck-over-glass delay of game penalty, he forced the officials to give Pittsburgh a power play and settle the crowd down a little bit. Erik Christensen had a beautiful chance at a rebound with Brodeur out to dry, but he whiffed on the shot. The Devils were able to kill the penalty.

Then the refs, desperate to call some even-up penalties, gave the Pens about a minute and a half of 5-on-3 time after calling minors on Zach Parise and Paul Martin. Malkin punched in a close-range slapper to tie the game at 4-4.

Then Malone snapped.

With less than thirty seconds left in the period, he got caught for holding. He had picked up the puck to give it to the linesman before realizing that he was the one being called. Once he found that out, he spiked the puck at the referee's feet. In a rare moment of wisdom, the ref let that go. But Malone wouldn't stop barking on his way to the box and, as the ref was signaling the holding call to the penalty timekeeper, Ryan slammed his stick into the glass next to the penalty box door. That was the last straw, and he picked up an extra unsportsmanlike conduct minor. That gave New Jersey 3½ minutes of power play time to being the third.

Mercifully for the fans, the refs swallowed their whistles for the third. Unfortunately, that brought the Pens right back to the way they were playing in the first: Soft defense and big rebounds from Marc-Andre Fleury. Malkin was threading needles with his passes, and Sid was channeling his frustration into furiously intense play, but when they weren't on the ice, New Jersey had the upper hand.

Pittsburgh's defense finally broke at 10:38, when Aaron Asham snuck through the back door behind Orpik, and tapped home a pass from Parise. 5-4 Devils, and The Trap is now in effect.

Wait, did I say that the refs swallowed their whistles? I spoke too soon. Sid hammered somebody with a clean, hard shoulder check, and a ref immediately put his hand up and signaled… tripping?! Here come the mouse pads again – wait, Asham just went after Crosby and took a retaliation call. Never mind. Roberts and Asham squared off in the scrum, and the whole thing ended up a wash. Crosby and Roberts, two each, Asham, four, all for roughing.

By the way, did I mention that this was a national game on TSN?

With Fleury pulled for a sixth attacker, a linesman gives us one last twist of the knife with a questionable, and very late, offside call on a rush.

Final Score: Devils 5, Penguins 4, coefficient of drag of a mouse pad thrown by a drunken, angry hockey fan: 0.89.

Three Stars:

1. Travis Zajac (2G)
2. Sergei Gonchar (1G, 1A)
3. Zach Parise (3A)

The overriding theme of the past few games has been "living and dying by overtime". The Penguins haven't been able to keep leads lately, and have been hanging on by their fingernails night after night.

Pens vs. Devils: 8 Mar 2007

Patrick Elias must have been scouting Marc-Andre Fleury in shoot-outs. Everybody else has been skating straight in and hoping that the deke or the quick release will beat him. Very few have succeeded. Elias had the last shot in the third round of a scoreless shoot-out. He swung wide right from the start, stayed out until he reached the face-off dot to Fleury's left, then skated laterally across the slot, waiting for Fleury to open his legs as he moved side-to-side. Elias beat Fleury five-hole to win the game.

Final Score: Devils 4, Penguins 3 (Devils win shoot-out 1-0)
Three Stars:

1. Sergei Brylin (1G from flat on his stomach)
2. Evgeni Malkin (1G, 1A)
3. Patrick Elias (1A, GW SOG)

Pens vs. Rangers: 10 Mar 2007

Another one of those early-afternoon matinée games, so the first was mostly-- Oh, my God! Oh, my God! THAT'S LARAQUE'S MUSIC! The fight everybody has been looking forward to since the trading deadline finally came to pass: Georges Laraque vs. Colton Orr. Orr got a couple of rights in early, and both players were down and back up multiple times. Laraque ended things with an overhand left and a roar from the Mellon Arena faithful.

The Rangers jumped out to an early lead by wrapping two goals around the first intermission. Early in the third, Evgeni Malkin scored on a power play to wake the Pens up. Three minutes later, Sidney Crosby scored a huge power play goal. A Malkin shot hopped up in the air, and Crosby caught it at the post to the right of Henrik Lundqvist, set it down on his stick, and poked it into the net over Lundqvist's outstretched leg. Not only did it tie the game at 2-2, it was Crosby's 100th point of the season, making him the youngest player in NHL history with two 100-point seasons.

Then, for everything Crosby and Malkin did to tie the game, they weren't even on the bench for the end of it. They had both gone to the runway for equipment work during the break before overtime, and didn't make it back before play resumed. The game ended with everybody from both sides over-shifting. Maximum Talbot made a tremendous effort to hold the puck in the Rangers' zone, and found Colby Armstrong open at the right half-boards. Colby took the pass and flung a wrist shot at the net. The puck hit Marek Malik's stick and deflected over Lundqvist's shoulder and into the net. Crosby and Malkin had to join the celebration from the hallway.

Final Score: Penguins 3, Rangers 2 (OT)

Three Stars:

1. Evgeni Malkin (1G, 1A)
   
2. Sidney Crosby (1G)
3. Sergei Gonchar (2A)

Pens vs. Sabres: 13 Mar 2007

Party at Mario's house!

Who invited all these people from Buffalo? And why do their jerseys have hairpieces on the front?

I'm not sure I like the fact that we had to celebrate the signing of Plan B against a team that travels well. There was entirely too much "Let's Go Buff-a-lo!" last night. Ya know what? We were too damn happy to care!

The referees were intent on keeping their whistles in their pockets, which led to three periods of wild up-and-down action and a month's worth of highlight-reel saves. For all that, what little scoring there was in the first two periods came in bursts.

• Late in the first, Jason Pominville mucks a rebound behind Fleury. 1-0 Sabres.
• Less than a minute later, Ryan Malone tips a Gonchar slapper in the net. 1-1.
• Late in the second, Maximum Talbot gets the Cheapest Goal In NHL History, by flinging a pass across the slot, only for the puck to hit Ryan Miller's leg and deflect into the net. 2-1 Pens.
• Chris Drury finds Dmitri Kalinin with a pretty one-timer pass. 2-2.

It looked like Pittsburgh was going to finally bury a game early in the third. Crosby poked home a Mark Recchi rebound for a power play goal a little over one minute in to make it 3-2. Gonchar made it 4-2 with a booming slapshot with about ten minutes to go.

Have I mentioned that the Sabres have the best record in the Eastern Conference?

Just two minutes after Gonchar's goal, Daniel Briere and Jochen Hecht got a 2-on-1 break. Hecht made a beautiful saucer pass to Briere, who buried it. 4-3.

With Miller pulled, Recchi almost had an empty-net goal, but his shot was Wide Right. (Wide Right is a registered trademark of Long Suffering Buffalo Fans, Inc.) With the Pens' defense hanging on for dear life, Drury fought for a rebound and scored with seven seconds remaining to tie it at 4-4.

Overtime was a lot of up-and-down, with nothing to show for it. Shoot-out time. Again.

• The Specialist Erik Christensen dekes Miller to the ice, then uses the Forsberg Reach-Around to score. 1-0 Pens.
• Daniel Briere doesn't take Patrick Elias' advice, and tries the deke-o-rama. It dribbles wide. 1-0 Pens.
• Jarkko Ruutu finally gets his chance, and can't beat Miller with the forehand-backhand move. Ruutu can't beat Miller with the rebound either. Um, Jarkko? You're not allowed to try the rebound. But that's not Ruutu's job. His job is to get in people's kitchen. A linesman kept Ruutu from learning just how in Miller's kitchen he was.
• Drew Stafford didn't take Elias' advice, either, but damn, was that a wicked release! 1-1, and we need a brief time-out while somebody finds a fire extinguisher for Fleury.
• Sidney Crosby rubs his hands like a mad scientist. "Perfect. Ruutu has Miller so aggravated, he'll never expect the Forsberg Reach-Around twice in the same shoot-out!" Just to rub it in, Crosby went to the opposite side that Christensen did. 2-1 Pens.
• Thomas Vanek might have considered Elias' advice, but after watching Stafford, figured he'd try that instead. Fleury teaches Vanek the error of his ways.

Final Score: Penguins 5, Sabres 4 (Pens win shoot-out 2-1), number of Zamboni breakdowns: 2. One died in the first intermission and wasn't ready for the second. Of course, the other one died in the second, so we had an extra-long break because they barely got the ice done after getting one Zamboni back on its wheels.

Three Stars:

1. Sidney Crosby (1G, 2A, GW SOG)
2. Ryan Whitney (3A)
3. Daniel Briere (1G, 2A)
   

10 points between 4th and 11th in the East. 2 points between 1st and 3rd in the Southeast. Detroit and Nashville are neck-and-neck in the Central. 3 points between 1st and 3rd in the Northwest. Pittsburgh has pulled within 5 of New Jersey in the Atlantic. All you sports columnists who think it's cool to ignore the NHL until playoff time, get off your asses. The playoffs have already started!

Even teams that are a long way from the 8th seed, like Washington, are playing with playoff intensity, and we haven't even reached the trading deadline. Yesterday afternoon, the Pens and Caps played an aggressive, tight-checking game from beginning to end.

With a 1:00pm matinée at the Islanders today, Coach Therrien decided that yesterday would be his best opportunity to give Marc-Andre Fleury a rest, so Jocelyn Thibault got the nod.

It didn't take long for the Pens' power play to take advantage. Mark Recchi redirected a Sergei Gonchar slapshot from the center point to make it a 1-0 game after six minutes. Richard Zednik came back a minute later, getting the last touch on a pinball from above the left circle. Tied at 1's. The rest of the first was a lot of good defense, a nice series of saves by Thibault, and Alexander Ovechkin and Erik Christensen escalating the chippiness for a moment.

The Zamboni doors almost benefited the Pens in the second, when a dump-in clanked off the glass behind Brent Johnson, skipped off the crossbar, hit Johnson's shoulder pads, and jumped straight up in the air, where Johnson was able to glove it.

It looked like a stalemate until 18:44, when Michel Ouellet dumped a pass behind the net, where Evgeni Malkin picked it up, skated to the right circle, passed it back to Gonchar at the point. Gonchar quickly looked the scene over, couldn't find a shooting lane, and passed it back to Malkin, who was in that narrow strip of ice between the bottom of the face-off circle and the goal line. The odds of finding the inside of the net from such a sharp angle are slim to none. Never tell Evgeni Malkin the odds. Geno one-timed the pass, and Johnson totally mis-read the play, dropping into the butterfly on a rising shot when he should have stayed up and hugged the post. Over the shoulder, just inside the top left corner, nothing but net. 2-1 Pens. Malkin hijacks the Crosby vs. Ovechkin hype plane, and forces it to land in Havana.

The Pens got a much-needed insurance goal early in the third, on a wrist shot by Maxime Talbot. It looked like the Caps were going to collect when Alexander Semin was awarded a penalty shot. Thibault whiffed on an attempted poke-check, and was hung out to dry, but Semin's wrister clanked harmlessly off the crossbar. Semin got a small measure of revenge, rebounding a Matt Pettinger shot with the goalie pulled, but it was too little, too late.

Final Score: Penguins 3, Capitals 2, Ovie's score line: 0G, 0A, 0 PIM, -1.

Three Stars:

1. Evgeni Malkin
2. Sergei Gonchar
3. Alexander Semin
   

Puck drops. Sid drops.

Maxim Lapierre popped Sidney Crosby in the gut on the opening faceoff. You stay classy, Canadiens.

I don't have to tell you that things stayed nasty for the rest of the game. The refs were hard pressed to keep it all straight, so their calls were, to put it kindly, uneven.

The first was a lot of up-and-down action and good defense. The Pens opened the scoring late in the period, with Evgeni Malkin altering the trajectory of a Sergei Gonchar rocket. 1-0 Pens after one.

The second started out like the first, only harder and faster. Then, about four minutes in, all hell broke loose. Saku Koivu circled behind the Penguins' net at full speed, but he was too busy looking for somebody to pass to. He never saw the freight train coming. Colby Armstrong, skating full speed in the opposite direction, hammered Saku Koivu so hard, his brother Mikko must have felt it all the way out in Denver. While Saku was peeling himself off the ice, Sheldon Souray came to his defense. Unfortunately for the Habs, Souray's idea of having Koivu's back was to jump on Armstrong's back, driving Colby down to the ice, throwing punches all the way down. Souray got 2 for instigating, 5 for fighting, a 10 minute misconduct, and a game misconduct. Armstrong got an escort to the penalty box, but only to keep him out of harms way until Souray left the ice. The Pens got a seven minute power play.

The Penguins cycled well, but couldn't beat David Aebischer. Then Radek Bonk got called for interference, giving the Pens two full minutes of 5-on-3. Gonchar rips a slapshot behind Aebischer, 2-0 Pens. Then the Habs got a break. Bonk blocked a Gonchar shot out to center ice, outraced Alain Nasreddine to the puck, and fired a cruise missile over Marc-Andre Fleury's glove hand for a short-handed goal. 2-1. Gonchar got revenge with another blast from the point to finish off Souray's instigating minor to make it 3-1 Pens. Bonk got another goal at the end of the second. 3-2 Pens after two.

The third started out looking good. Erik Christensen almost scored on a wicked wrist shot from the left circle, but he hit the post, then almost beat Aebischer by taking a disgusted one-handed swing at the rebound as he turned to the bench for a line change. Two shifts later, Christensen finally scored with a wrister from the slot to make the score 4-2 Pens. Time for that defense first game that shut down the Panthers Tuesday night, right?

Maybe that works against Florida, but Montreal is a much better team. The Canadiens kept cranking up the intensity, putting the Penguins back on their heels. Just as it looked like the Pens might get a little momentum back, Montreal got two sucker punches in. First came a literal sucker punch, when Tomas Plekanec socked Nasreddine in the face, resulting in a power play for the Pens and a face-off to the right of Fleury. Then came the figurative sucker punch, as Montreal won the face-off, cycled the puck to the opposite point, and scored another short-handed goal, on a deflection by Mike Johnson. 4-3 Pens, and now the Mellon Arena faithful are sweating a little bit.

With the Penguins scrambling in their own end, Montreal tied the game on a fluky goal by Mathieu Dandenault. His centering pass bounced off Fleury and Rob Scuderi before trickling oh-so-slowly across the goal line.

Overtime. Montreal dominated early, then Koivu and Brooks Orpik got into a shoving match behind the Pens' net, and were called for offsetting minors. Good news: Orpik got Koivu off the ice. Bad news: Two minutes of mind-numbing defensive 3-on-3 play. I'm talking New Jersey vs. Minnesota, dueling neutral zone trap boring. Montreal got another power play late in OT, but Fleury stood tall to force the shootout.

• Christensen is a shootout specialist, and he didn't disappoint. 1-0 Pens.
• Alexei Kovalev's mullet dazzles Fleury. 1-1.
• Crosby scored a beautiful shootout goal against Montreal last year, so maybe -- one move too many, the puck rolls off his stick and into the corner. Still 1-1.
• Christopher Higgins tests Fleury's glove side, and fails it. 1-1.
• Malkin says "Hey, Kovy, I don't need a mullet!" 2-1 Pens.
• Plekanec is Montreal's last chance, but he is no match for Fleury's Crouching Butterfly Style.

Final Score, Penguins 5, Canadiens 4 (Pens win shootout 2-1), Sheldon Souray's official PIM: 27.

Three Stars:

1. Sergei Gonchar (2G, 1A)
2. Radek Bonk (2G)
3. Evgeni Malkin (1G, 1A, SO GWG)
   

Tonight's magic word is energy.

As usual, Leafs fans who can't get a sniff of tickets at Air Canada Centre invaded Mellon Arena. It wasn't quite as bad as last year, when it looked like a dimensional rift somehow exchanged entire sections of the Igloo and the ACC. Tonight was on par with the usual Philly crowds, except we're not getting the usual Philly crowds this year on account of they suck.

I think the players picked up on the dueling chants of "Lets Go Pens!" and "Go Leafs Go!", because the tempo started fast and never let up. Lots of back-and-forth rushes, everybody was finishing their checks with authority, and a great fight between Ben Ondrus and Jarkko Ruutu.

What did the Leafs in was penalties. The Pens went 3-for-10 on the power play, with goals by Erik Christensen, Sergei Gonchar, and Evgeni Malkin. Mats Sundin got the Leafs only goal, collecting a rebound on an odd-man break. Jordan Staal closed the scoring with some aggressive forechecking, stealing the puck from Bryan McCabe behind the net, curling to the front, and stuffing it behind ex-Penguin Jean-Sebastien Aubin.

Unfortunately, I had to wait until I got home to see most of the replays. At some point Wednesday night, one of the jumbotrons visible from my seat died, leaving 3/4 of the screen dark. Tonight, that screen was still mostly dead, and the other screen visible from my seat slowly died before our eyes. From the start, a small patch in one corner was dark. Then, in the 2nd period, a Toronto defenseman's attempt at clearing the zone with a high flip arced so high in the air, the puck hit the jumbotron! For the rest of the game, we watched that screen degrade from an odd-colored patch around the point of impact, to something that looked like a broken LCD TV from wiihaveaproblem.com, to going 3/4 dark, just like the other screen. I'm starting to worry about these Toronto games. The Leafs were our opponent during the infamous double power failure game last season, and now this. What's going to break next? My money's on a Zamboni dumping its crankcase all over the center-ice faceoff circle.

Final Score: Penguins 4, Maple Leafs 1, "For Sale" signs stolen from ill-informed Leafs fans and torn up by a guy in my section: 2. (Don't worry, the Leafs fans were good sports!)

Three Stars:

1. Marc-Andre Fleury (30 for 31)
2. Sergei Gonchar (1G, 1A)
3. Sidney Crosby (3A)
   

Quote of the night, courtesy of Darmok:

There's no "I" in "team", but there's three "U"s in "Ruutu"!

First, the bad news:

• Nils Ekman missed another game with a stomach virus.
• Evgeni Malkin was a -2, with only 1 shot on goal.
• Marc-Andre Fleury let a few soft ones in.

Now, the good news:

• We were playing the Flyers.

OK, I'll make with the details:

• Sidney Crosby had a goal and 5 assists. This is the first time he's scored more than 4 points in a game. With this 6-point night, he has taken the lead in scoring in the NHL. And, believe it or not, 1+5 is not enough to adequately describe just how dominant Sid was tonight. He was skating circles around everything in white and orange. If anybody wants video evidence of how slow the Flyers' defense is, show them this game.
  
• Ryan Malone had a goal and 3 assists. I think this is his first 4-point night in the NHL. This was also his first goal of an injury-shortened season.
  
• Sergei Gonchar had 2 goals and 3 assists.
• Michel Ouellet got off of his personal schnied with a goal.
• Jarko Ruutu has a point in consecutive games for the first time this season, assisting on a goal by Chris Thorburn. That's the second goal in as many nights for a third line that's been flying lately. Max Talbot must have been bummed, though. Normally, he owns Antero Niittymaki, and he was held pointless tonight.
  

  Jordan Staal gets his turn
• Jordan Staal added to the Pens' highlight reel parade with a short-handed goal with seven seconds left in the game. Another day, another defenseman and goaltender faked out of their shorts by a teenager in black and gold. Ho hum. That's Staal's 4th shorty of the year, which is a record for Penguins rookies.
  
• If the Flyers have played a more undisciplined period of hockey this season, I can't imagine how bad it could have been compared to the 2nd tonight. Todd Fedoruk took 8 consecutive minutes in penalties between the 1st and 2nd periods. After a call in the middle of the first, he tried to start something with Ryan Whitney Sidney Crosby (!) as the teams were leaving the ice after the 1st ended. He started the 2nd serving a double minor. 1:28 after those minors expired, he was back in the box for another minor. So thank you, Todd Fedoruk, for 2 power play goals! Oh, and thank Mike Knuble while you're at it. The extra unsportsmanlike conduct minor he got tagged with on a holding penalty led to Ouellet's goal. (Update: My seat is at the end of a row, so the rush of people headed to the concourse blocked my view of the ice at the end of the 1st. I didn't see how that fracas started, and thought it was just Fedoruk and Whitney. It wasn't until I read the morning paper that I got the full story. Fedoruk shoved Crosby as he skated to center ice for an interview with TSN. Whitney got involved to defend Crosby. So Fedoruk was even dumber than I originally thought!)
  

Oh, and did I mention the goaltender substitution weirdness?

• First, at the start of the 2nd, while each team's captain was debating those end-of-the-1st penalties with Kerry Frazier, Fleury suddenly skated off the ice, with the equipment manager in hot pursuit. Jocelyn Thibault played the first 6 minutes or so of the second, stopping the only shot he faced.
• Later in the 2nd, after Gonchar's second goal, Niittymaki skated to the bench with an equipment problem of his own. This gave Martin Houle his first appearance in the NHL. He stopped the two shots he faced, then returned to the runway as Niittymaki jumped over the boards. Not so fast! That stoppage was for icing. No substitutions, not even the goalie. Houle goes back in, and promptly gives up his first NHL goal to Mark Recchi.
  

Final score: Penguins 8, Flyers 4, Martin Houle's ice time: 2:12

Three Stars:

1. Sidney Crosby (1G, 5A)
2. Sergei Gonchar (2G, 3A)
3. Ryan Malone (1G, 3A)
   

What does it say when the most remarkable things about a tilt with the Rangers are:

• Mark Recchi had 2 goals
• The Pens' division record is now 7-1-0
• It took something like 10 minutes to correct the game clock with less than one minute remaining in the third.

Of course, for much of the first period, the scoreboard alternated between reading "PENGUINS" vs. "RANGERS" and "penguins" vs. "devils". Chalk it up to Crappy Old Mellon Arena. At least the lights stayed on.

As is tradition in Pittsburgh, Jaromir Jagr was booed every time he touched the puck. Other former Penguins get much less hostile greetings: A small cheer for Marty Straka, an indifferent isn't-he-due-for-his-annual-shoulder-injury? reaction to Michal Rozsival, and a loud groan when Darius Kasparaitis was scratched. Yeah, we really miss Kaspar that much.

Final Score: Penguins 3, Rangers 1, number of times a referee skated between the ref's crease and the benches during that damn clock delay: Um, I lost count.

Three Stars:

1. Mark Recchi (2G)
2. Sidney Crosby (2A)
3. Sergei Gonchar (2A)
   

This game was defined by special teams and momentum. And instant replay.

There was only one even-strength goal in the game, by Fredrik Modin. Otherwise, it was a ton of odd-man play, usually coming in long stretches for one team or the other.

Jordan Staal made a compelling argument for staying in Pittsburgh. (He has two more games before the Penguins must make a decision: keep him in the NHL for the entire season, with no option to send him to the AHL, and start the clock toward unrestricted free agency, or return him to Peterborough for one more season in the juniors.) He had two short-handed goals in the game. The first was good ol' fashioned aggressive penalty killing. The second allowed the replay booth to earn its keep.

Staal had a step on his defender, who got caught waterskiing, so Staal was awarded a penalty shot on Fredrik Norrena. Staal swung right-to-left, and snapped off a wrister that clanged hard off the post. The ref emphatically waved off the goal, then the crowd at that end of the rink (not my end, unfortunately) started shouting, as did the Penguins' bench. We never saw it on the Jumbotron, but the replay booth had a replay angle that showed the puck ringing off the post, off the back of Norrena's leg, and slowly gliding into the net. And thus, Jordan Staal earned his third short-handed goal, in only the seventh game of his NHL career.

Otherwise, it was three power play goals. Two from the usual suspects, Michel Ouellet and Sergei Gonchar, and one from Evgeni Malkin. Adding Malkin to the power play has given it a crispness it hasn't had in years. With Ryan Whitney and Gonchar at the points, and Ouellet making the left post his favourite campground, Sid and Geno are getting room to create. And I'm not convinced they're entirely in sync yet. We'll see how scary this power play unit can be as the season rolls on.

Final score: Penguins 5, Blue Jackets 3, number of games it took last year's Pens to reach 4 wins: 15.

Stars of the game:

1. Jordan Staal (2 SHG)
2. Sergei Gonchar (1G, 1A)
3. Evgeni Malkin (1G)