Is anyone else as concerned as I am?
Admittedly, I don't feel panic. But I'm not feeling at all comfortable with the way the Penguins are playing.
Prior to last night's game 5 of this Eastern Conference Quarterfinal between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, I and everyone else in Penguin land felt it was important that the Penguins finish off the Flyers, so as to give themselves some recovery time before another round of grueling Stanley Cup playoff hockey.
I also felt it was critical because the Flyers have played the better hockey in this series overall, and I wanted the Penguins to stomp on their throats before they continue to believe more and more that they might win.
Last night's 3-0 whitewashing at the hands of the Flyers will give them exactly that confidence.
The Penguins just weren't good last night. They came up lame on thier home ice in a chance to send the Flyers packing and showed the complete opposite of the killer instinct they showed on so many occasions last season.
The title of this article from ESPN's Scott Burnside says it all about the Penguins' performance last night:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/playoffs/2009/news?columnist=burnside_scott&id=4094386
Sure, the Penguins were good in the first period last night. They outshot Philadelphia and had several good scoring chances. Centers Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal, for example, were denied by a tall-looking Martin Biron in the Philadelphia goal, who held the fort well.
RW Tyler Kennedy had the best chance, cutting off a pass from behind the net Biron thought was going to go all the way around to Staal, and missing on an open wraparound opportunity he should have buried. Unfortunately, TK just pulled up short trying to get it in.
Had Kennedy scored there, the game might have been different.
As it was, the Penguins' lost the wind from their sails in the last 2 periods, starting with RW Aaron Asham's goal on a 45-foot slapper that beat Penguins' netminder Marc-Andre Fleury about 7 minutes into the 2nd period to give Philadelphia the lead.
Pittsburgh thought they had tied the game just a few minutes later on a power play when a Sergei Gonchar rebound came off the back boards and went in off Malkin, but the play was reviewed and overturned --- correctly, I might add -- because Malkin clearly kicked the puck with his skate before it went in and didn't get a piece of it with his stick.
In the 3rd period, things took a turn for the worse for Pittsburgh.
Defenseman Philippe Boucher, inserted into the lineup in place of Kris Letang in an effort to boost the Penguins' power play, failed to clear the puck out of his zone and a Flyer shot caromed off something on the way to the goal right to Philadelphia center Claude Giroux for an easy goal and a 2-0 Flyers lead about 8 minutes in.
Boucher also contibuted to the Flyers' third goal about 5 minutes or so later when his turnover lead to a Philadlephia rush that ended with a 3-0 lead when Fleury kicked out a long rebound from a Scott Hartnell shot right to RW Mike Knuble who deposited the puck into another empty cage from about 30 feet.
Boucher was -2 on the night. Knuble's goal was the last entry on the scoresheet.
The Penguins as a whole just didn't have it in the final 40 minutes. The Flyers did a good job cutting off the Penguins' in the neutral zone and the Penguins didn't do a good job of attacking sufficiently with speed.
The Penguins had 15 shots in the first period, but only 13 in the final 2 periods combined.
Their 3rd line was strong for a lot of the game, but the Penguins need to start getting contributions on the scoresheet from certain players.
LW Chris Kunitz is one. He hasn't scored in this series and, while he's been a physical presence, he needs to contribute more offensively.
LW Ruslan Fedotenko is another guy who can contribute more.
Even Crosby's other winger, Bill Guerin, has been quiet since game 2, which coincidentally, is when the Flyers began playing better hockey in this series. They haven't looked back since, and anyone who thinks that Philadlephia hasn't played better overall than the Penguins despite now being in only a 3-2 hole hasn't been watching that closely or is a homer.
The Penguins' did themselves well to capitalize in overtime in game 2 to complete a comeback win, and to have Fleury steal game 4 for them, but their play over the entire course of this series has not been up to par.
So now, the Penguins have to go back to a hell of an atmosphere for game 6 in Philadelphia. The Penguins have done their share of winning there in recent years, going 8-7 in the last 15 contests in that building, but there's no doubt that they aren't making it easy on themselves. They'll need to play much better in game 6 there than they did in game 4 if they expect to win.
Another victory for Philadlephia in that one will only give the Flyers more momentum heading into a then anything-can-happen game 7 Monday at Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh.
Clearly that's a game the Penguins shouldn't want to play.
Clearly they should be well-motivated to up their game and finish off Philadelphia Saturday.
But they also should have had that same motivation to do the job last night at home.
In the 14 series' the Flyers' have been down 3 games to 1, including this one, they've now stretched the series to 6 games on 7 occasions. In only 3 of the prior 13 have they forced a 7th game, and haven't done it since the 1987 Stanley Cup Final, which they went on to lose.
Time will tell if Saturday afternoon's nationally televised contest ends up being the 4th.
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