Well, that was ugly.....real ugly, at least defensively for Pittsburgh. You can hear people looking to jump off the bandwagon after another poor performance defensively for Pittsburgh. They have had an extraordinary run for an extended period of time, and now they have played like, well, shit in two of the past three games defensively. Brooks Orpik was quoted after the game as saying that the Pens are trying to outscore teams instead of play defense right now. It shows. I cannot recall so many odd man breaks, and forwards getting in behind our defense as I have seen in the past few games. Normally, when it does happen, Fleury is bailing us out. Tonight Fleury played a very rare bad game, and he did not make the ten bell saves we have gotten used to that would have kept Pittsburgh in this game. And we lost. Period. Am I a little concerned about the defensive lapses lately? Yes. Should we be panicking? Absolutely not. Are we as good as some have said we are? Probably not. Are we good enough to be skating away with the hardware in June? Yes, yes we are, IF we remember that our offense is best when we play sound in our defensive zone and generate offense off the rush in the TRANSITION game. The defensive corps was built to minimize zone time in the defensive zone, and to quickly transition to offense, but only after you have done your job in your zone. I think that this team will learn from the past couple of games, and get back to the solid three zone play we enjoyed since the early days of January. They have the talent, coaching and leadership to do so. I will make the summary tonight short. In losing to the Islanders, the Penguins missed a chance to keep pace with the Rangers who beat Minnsesota tonight, but instead fall back to 3 points behind them for the conference lead. They also lost a chance to really put the pressure on the Flyers by taking a six point lead with both teams having six games left. They will survive. I don't get paid for this shit, so I will be damned if I take the time to recap this kind of game, so I will leave you with some statistics and summary information. Tyler Kennedy scored his 10th goal tonight, making him the 8th Penguins player to hit double digits in goals this season. Brian Strait got his first NHL point tonight. Dupuis's assist on the goal extended his scoring streak to 11 games, scoring 8 goals and 6 assists in the span. Evgeni Malkin had two helpers tonight, running his point total for the season to 99 points, and extending his lead on Stamkos for the Art Ross to 11 points. The Real Deal, James Neal scored his 36th and 37th goals of the season, one of which is his 16th power play goal of the season, tying him with Scott Hartnell for the league lead. Simon Despres played a strong game tonight, and got involved offensively several times on the rush. He played with poise throughout the game, and I look forward to seeing Simon on this team for good next season. The Penguins 10 game home winning streak and 13 game home winning streak came to an end tonight. At any rate, several Penguins players have admitted to the focus being too much on outscoring the other team as opposed to keep the puck out of their own net. As they say, the first step in fixing a problem is to admit that you have one. I look for Pittsburgh to fix that issue and get themselves back on track here in time for a pretty tough six game close to the season. GO PENS!!
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