Penguins 3, Ducks 1

Great effort by the Pens tonight. They benefited from some lucky bounces (say "Thank You, Hockey Gods" from Matt Cooke) and played some nice team defense. This was probably unexpected, given that the third and fourth line were straight out of Wilkes-Barre (other than Godard).

The effort from the PK was especially good. The Ducks scored on their first chance with the man advantage, cutting Matt Cooke's the Penguins lead to 2-1. The Ducks were gifted with three more chances, and three times the Pens killed those chances. Bill Thomas and Dustin Jeffrey both played important minutes on the PK in the third period, and both came up huge.

The Pens parade to the IR continued when Brooks Orpik left the game. No word on what his injury might be, but Ryan Whitney came up huge, playing almost 30 minutes with extended time on both the PP and PK.

All of the forwards played well. Everyone seemed to keep their game simple, except for Geno a few times (and who would begrudge him that?) One in particular to point out was Chris Minard. He isn't the fastest skater out there, but if you contribute 5 shots on goal and 4 hits per night, you'll earn some time in the NHL. I hope he can stick and contribute while the Pens are down a few guys.

Fleury was also great when he needed to be. He didn't let in anything unusual and kept his game simple as well.

It would have been nice to see Cooke get the HT. Geno and Petr tried like heck to get him the puck with the empty net. They just couldn't pull it off.

Great win for the Pens. Hopefully one to build on for Sunday.

Next up: Blueshirt Alert! The Rangers are invading the Igloo on Sunday at 12:30 for a national NBC broadcast.