Ouch!

Pens skating out for Game 6
Fatheads, a pregame ritual!


No love for Coach Blimpy BooHoodreau

Okay, shake it off.........Pens in seven was the prediction at the outset, and the Song Remains the Same! This is the best playoff series I can recall in a long time........Every game has been back and forth with lead changes, each team digging down to score big goals, and now three of the six have taken OT to decide the winner. Some notes from the game tonite........The Pens outshot the Caps 42-24 and scored 4 goals. If you told me those numbers pre-game I would have been SURE we were going to close out this series a game early! I would not have figured that 24 shots would net the Craps 5 goals! I generally do subscribe to the "you win as a team and lose as a team" theory but you will not win any playoff games when your goaltender lets in 5 goals on 24 shots. Period. There were "things" that occurred as part of the process in those goals, Gill screening Fleury, Gill bumping Fleury, and though Hal Gill also had a subpar game, YOU CANNOT LET IN 5 GOALS ON 24 SHOTS and expect to win. I thought the Pens generally outplayed the Caps tonite as evidenced by the shots on goal, but for the first time in the series, the defense looked a little lost at times. I also think we are making Varlamov look better than he is. He has made some tremendous saves in this series, and is frankly the only reason the Craps are still here, BUT, he also leaves plenty of VERY JUICY rebounds in front of the net, and the Pens have misfired on many scoring opportunities, and tonite were simply beaten to some of those rebounds by the Caps defense. Some kudos.............Eaton.......WTF is up there.....this guy is playing a solid brand of defense for the Pens and tallied his 4th playoff goal tonite! Rob Scuderi is an unsung hero and doing a stellar job as usual in the defensive zone. Great job! Sid the Kid is second in playoff scoring notching 10 goals and 8 assists for 18 points and we are not yet out of the second round. This is an incredible number when you consider that Sid tied Pavel Datsyuk with 26 points in last years playoffs in total. At this pace, Sid would finish with 36 to 40 points! Ovcechkin has one more point and has played one more game. Despite the fact that he went through a stretch without scoring much, Evgeni Malkin has 6 goals and 11 assists for 17 points! In an interesting note, 5 of the top 6 playoff scorers are in THIS series. Ovechkin, Crosby, Malkin, Getzlaf, Backstrom and Semin in that order are the top 6 in scoring in the playoffs. We will need one or both of our guys to show up big on Wednesday. Currently Marc Andre Fleury is 11th out of the 16 playoff goaltenders with a 2.78 GAA and .901 save percentage. Varlamov has a 2.28 GAA and .925 save percentage and is 5th. The 5 goaltenders behind Fleury not coincidentally were all eliminated in first round, leaving Fleury with the worst statistics of the remaining 8 goaltenders. Not exactly what the expectations were. Come on Marc, we need you pal!

The top 5 goaltenders are all still in the playoffs as part of the final 8.
Another Penguin who needs to step up is Jordan Staal. Sorry, but one goal in 12 playoff games is not what the Pens had in mind when thinking of their third line center as the X Factor that most teams cannot compete with. Finally, I never would have believed that Petr Sykora would be a nonentity and then a healthy scratch for the playoffs. His production from last years playoff run is SORELY missed. The whole third line was a bit subpar tonite.
It still bothers me a great deal that Ovechkin put Gonchar out of the series with a cheap knee on knee shot, and that Brashear put Betts out for the Rangers on an even more cheap shot and this team is still in the post season. We knew this would not be easy, and it hasn't been. I predicted at the beginning of this series that the Pens would send this side show of a team to the links in 7, and I still believe that!