As I was taking in Saturday afternoon's 5-4 Penguin victory over the Philadelphia Flyers, it felt I was watching a replay of the team's 5-4 win over the Montreal Canadiens victory Thursday night at Mellon Arena.
The Penguins stormed to a 2 goal lead, blew the lead, but recovered and got the last goal to win.
More importantly, the Penguins tucked 2 points into their pockets to stay in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff race, 4 points behind the now 8th place New York Rangers.
Sidney Crosby stole the show and handed the Flyers and their hateful home fans their lunch this afternoon, ringing up 2 goals, and adding 2 helpers on 2 goals by Ruslan Fedotenko, who looks great on #87's RW.
Evgeni Malkin added the other Pittsburgh goal, tipping in a Sergei Gonchar point shot.
This game was quite a contest. There was physical play befitting these two division rivals, together with a lot of skating and a lot of intensity. The goaltending left a bit to be desired on each side, but it's hard to argue that Flyers' goalie Martin Biron made the biggest gaffe of the night to pave the way to a Penguin victory with about 3 minutes to go in the game, which was then a 4-4 tie.
Penguins' defenseman Ryan Whitney lightly dumped the puck into the middle of the Flyers zone from his own blueline, trying to catch LW Pascal Dupuis coming off the Penguin bench. Dupuis got a half step on the Flyer defender, so Biron came 35 feet out of his net to try and beat Dupuis to the puck
Biron did so, but gloved the puck instead of just knocking it away. To avoid a delay of game penalty, he tried to quickly get rid of it by tossing it behind him as he stood up off the ice facing his own net.
The problem was that Biron failed miserably at tossing the puck away. It actually dropped right behind him, where Dupuis conveniently got up after bumping Biron as he game out for the puck.
Dupuis quickly got a pass to Crosby, who had entered the zone and was steaming down the right wing. Crosby reached for the puck, beat a Flyer defenseman to it and poked it into the empty cage before Biron could get back.
What a play.
The Penguins had fair control of this game at 3-1 in early in the 3rd period before Ryan Whitney made a bad giveaway while on the power play. Whitney tried to pass cross-point to Gonchar, but Penguin killer and shorthanded wiz Mike Richards stole the puck and went in on a breakaway against Penguin netminder Marc-Andre Fleury before giving him a quick deke and just tucking the puck between Fleury's legs after opening him up.
I could have strangled Whitney for making that so easy for Richards.
That goal gave the Flyers momentum and, thanks to a broken Petr Sykora stick, were able to tie the game within minutes.
After the Penguins took the lead again, Philadelphia actually capitalized a second time because of another Penguin, Gonchar, breaking his twig in his own zone.
No doubt Philadelphia got some breaks there.
Biron's gaffe made up for that, however, and sent the Penguins to Washington for a big next-day nationally televised game against the Alexander Ovechkin and Capitals at 12:30 PM on NBC.
The Penguins still need to work on their "aggressive" defense, but I think they played better than Philadelphia and deserved to win. It looks like they are quickly getting the hand of playing "aggressive" offensively under new coach Dan Bylmsa, scoring 5 goals for the 2nd game in a row against a team that had won its last 3 games on home ice to the tune of 16-6.
Pittsburgh definitely looks like a faster team out there. They are skating more all over the ice and it shows. They'll have to do that to match up well against Washington, when 2 more huge points are at stake.
If the Penguins can beat the Capitals, it will be the first time they've won 3 in a row since November.
It couldn't come at a better time -- or against an opponent more deserving for, since the Caps' have beat the Penguins twice on their home ice this season so far.
Recap Monday. Go Pens!
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