Pens defeat Jackets 4-2

Today's game was the second game of the third weekend in a row of back to back games for the Penguins.    I am  going to jump straight to the game today.  It was a weird game with three distinctly different periods.  In the first, the Penguins outshot Columbus 15-5, and dominated play, but came out of it with nothing to show for it.  In the second period, the Penguins got sloppy on a power play, and Rick Nash cashed in at 9:49 short handed to score the first goal against Brad Thiessen in his NHL career.  The Pens were down 1-0.  And though the Penguins played a sloppy period for 20 minutes, at 19:12 of the period, red hot Evgeni Malkin notched his 37th goal of the season on the power play, assisted by James Neal (31) and Steve Sullivan (22) to tie the game at 1-1.  So, despite playing a very sloppy period two, the Penguins came out of it in a 1-1 tie.  Then came a wild third period, in which the Penguins scored 5 times, 3 of them actually counting to take control of the game.  Anyway, I digress.  Pascal Dupuis gave the Pens their first lead of the day, getting his 15th goal of the season at 5:50, assisted by Steve Sullivan (23), and Jordan Staal (10).  Staal and Dupuis traded the puck behind the net, before Duper came out from behind the net to beat Sanford to give the Pens a 2-1 lead. Then the game got weird, and as happens to often, the incompetency of the NHL officials, and more so the War Room in Toronto reared its UGLY head.  After a net front scramble, with Kunitz in the net, the puck crosses the line as Kunitz is spinning to take a whack at it.  It appeared to me on the Jumbotron, that the puck was actually pushed in by the momentum of the collapsing Columbus defense, but the War Room upheld the call on the ice, NO GOAL.   I very much disagreed with that call based on the views on the jumbotron, but I have seen worse calls.  Then minutes later, Kris Letang blasted a puck past Sanford, and as we celebrated, again, the asshats in stripes disallow the goal based on incidental contact Kunitz had with Sanford.  Post game Sanford admitted to being very surprised as Kunitz's contact was not only marginal, it happened before the shot, which Sanford admitted, and he further admitted to being out of postion due to trying to push Kunitz out of his way due to the screen he was providing.  Somehow, that horrible call was confirmed and Kunitz was involved in his 7th waived off goal of the season.  GARAGE LEAGUE.  Not be denied, Kris Letang cashed in moments later for his 9th goal of the season,  the Penguins second power play goal of the day, assisted by Richard Park (7) and Matt Cooke (14).  The Penguins now had a 3-1 lead and Pollock and St. Laurent could not figure out a way to disallow that one.  Finally, Joe Vitale put the game away with his fourth goal of the season at 14:57, assisted by Eric Tangradi (1) and Matt Cooke (15).   The Penguins now led 4-1.  The Jackets scored seconds later to make it 4-2, but there was no further scoring after that, and the Penguins skated away with another victory, putting them into 4th place for the time being in the Eastern Conference.  The game marked several milestones for the Penguins.  It was Brad Thiessen's first NHL game and first NHL win, so congratulations to him for that.  It also marked Coach Disco Dan's 150th career win as head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins!  Thank you and congratulations to HCDB.  Kris Letang's goal was the game winner, his 11th of his career, tying for second in Penguins history in terms of game winning goals by a defenseman with Paul Coffey and Sergei  Gonchar.  Only Larry Murphy (12) has more game winning goals as a Penguin from the blue line.  The game also marked the second game in a row that Eric Tangradi has been back with the big club, and he looked pretty effective in both games, though he only had one point to show for it.  He was hitting, was sound in his own zone, and created a handful of scoring chances as well.  I also wanted to note that the Penguins are 6-3-1 in the past 10 games, and are now 15-4-1 in their last 20 games, a very impressive and effective stretch for Pittsburgh.  Part of the current success has been special teams play for Pittsburgh.  Their penalty kill unit is 2nd in the NHL at 88.5%.  Since the PK unit was first overall in the NHL last season, that was not so surprising.  However, the power play has been a very pleasant surprise, clicking at 20.9%, good for 5th in the NHL.  Also, for all of the talk about needing to add scoring depth, the Penguins are currently 4th in the league in goals for at 3.03 per game.  The Penguins are 11th in the league in GAA at 2.58, a number I hope they can improve down the stretch with more solid play from Martin and Michalek.   Next up for Pittsburgh, is a road trip to Dallas and Colorado this week.  Let's Go Pens!