Saturday, October 08, 2005

Hurricanes 3, Penguins 2 (SO)

Wow - that was an exciting way to end a hockey game. Not sure how Lemieux, Palffy and Crosby could all fail to score on a breakaway... but that's what happened. Caron really played well. The Hurricanes goals were one off of Melichar's skate and a breakaway at the end of a penalty by Stillman. The breakaway was of significance since he beat Caron on the forehand (Errey, the Pens TV announcer, was saying that's Stillman's well-known move). For the shootout, he (Stillman) went to the backhand, easily beating Caron.

Crosby absolutely looks like the real deal the more I see him play. His pass to setup Palffy tonght was beautiful. He looked like he was shooting, but instead passed the puck across the mouth of the goal crease to Palffy who was standing at the far post to tap it in. Put the puck right on his tape. Now, had it been Brodeur instead of Ward in goal, I'd imagine that pass wouldn't have made it through the crease - a goalie like Brodeur probably would have kicked it out.

Anyway, the Pens showed some resiliance tonight. Nothing was working for two periods, and they hung around long enough to scratch out a point. Hopefully that momentum builds into tonight's home opener.

The only other thing of note from last night is that the refs seemed to put away the whistles late in the game. Gonchar and Recchi were both tripped pretty blatantly and nothing was called. Recchi retaliated, and nothing was called there either. Hope that doesn't spread to other parts of the game like the refs have done in previous seasons.

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