Saturday, March 18, 2006

Penguins 5, Canadiens 4

This was a game that actually made me turn away from the NCAA tournament. Great end to end action, a great flukey game winner by Andre Roy, and a great high energy game.

First off, the latest sign that the apocalypse is upon us - Andre Roy scores a game winner in the third period. Armstrong made a great play to keep the puck in the zone and got the puck to Crosby. Sidney showed great vision and saw Roy coming down the slot and got him the puck. The weirdest thing about the goal is the only reason it went in was because Roy was hooked and never got to make a move on the puck. Aebischer moved to his left, anticipating the move / shot by Roy and the puck went in just inside of the post to his right.

The Pens were outshot badly, especially during the second period. They hung in there and played their game. It paid off. It helped, of course, that the Canadiens were squeezing their sticks and talking to themselves quite a bit, almost entirely due to the play of Marc-Andre Fleury.

Fleury was absolutely incredible, especially during the third period, making huge save after huge save. He has really grown up this week, and tonight topped it off. In the past, where we've seen Fleury give up the late goal at a crucial time, tonight, we saw him find a way to make the saves that were needed to win the game. He was the #1 star, and deservedly so.

One last thing - I'd like to congratulate the Canadiens media who vote on the three stars - all three were Penguins. I think in a 5-4 game, the media in Philly or New York would have found a reason to make the home team have two of the three stars. I know it's really unimportant, but it's one of my pet peeves...

Quick turnaround - game tomorrow at home against the Leafs. Preview up tomorrow, if I can get to it before the Pitt game at 12:10... :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Can someone tell me what happened to Jani Rita? I was at work so I wasn't paying attention the whole time, but I hardly saw him. I saw Tomas (or is it Thomas?) Surovy in his place on the top line. On the game's shift chart, I see he miss a large chunk of time in the second period. What happened?
Anyways, that was a good game. Fleury played very well. That game seemed to move very fast. When they game out like that in the first, I thought for sure they would slow down but they didn't.

I wonder how many spelling/grammar/typos I made this time?