The New Jersey Devils came into last night's game against the Pittsburgh Penguins at Mellon Arena leading the Atlantic Division with 98 points, but winless in their last 5 games.
They had a tongue lashing from their coach, Brent Sutter, the day before after he watched them come out lifeless in New York against the Rangers on Monday and leave the building shutout, 3-0.
Everybody expected Martin Brodeur and the Devils to come out strong against Pittsburgh.
They went back to New Jersey abused worse than Rihanna after a car ride with Chris Brown.
The Penguins dominated the Devils last night in beating them 6-1. They owned New Jersey from the drop of the puck and sent the Devils back home licking their wounds even worse than when they arrived in Pittsburgh.
Matt Cooke got the Penguins rolling about 5 minutes into the game, sweeping a loose puck through a screened Brodeur from about 10 feet after Max Talbot came from behind the net with the puck and tried to jam it past Brodeur, but lost it on the way.
Bill Guerin scored his 20th of the season 36 seconds later, beating Brodeur on a wrister to give the Penguins a 2-0 lead.
With Guerin's score, the Penguins matched the Philadelphia Flyers for the team with the most 20-goal scorers -- 6 (Malkin, Crosby, Sykora, Kunitz, Staal and Guerin).
Brian Gionta got the Devils on the board about halfway through the first period, but Evgeni Malkin scored a power play goal before the period expired, beating Brodeur under the arm from the right circle to give the Pens' a 3-1 lead at the intermission.
Pittsburgh poured it on in the 2nd, with Sidney Crosby scoring his 30th -- also on the power play -- when a shot from defenseman Kris Letang at the point went off his skate and in.
The officials reviewed the goal but determined, correctly, that Crosby did not use a distinct kicking motion to deposit the puck in the net.
11 seconds after Crosby's goal, Pittsburgh went up 5-1 when Jordan Staal buried a juicy rebound off a Ruslan Fedotenko shot.
Fedotenko's low slapper off Brodeur's pads is exactly the kind of thing Penguins' interim head coach Dan Bylmsa has been preaching -- shoot the puck off the goaltender's pads specifically to try and generate rebounds. It worked to a charm on that play. The puck couldn't have come into Staal's wheelhouse any better.
LW Chris Kunitz closed out the scoring in the 3rd period, tossing a turnaround backhander past Brodeur far side to finish things off at 6-1.
Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 24 of 25 shots in the win.
With the victory, the Penguins moved up to 92 points in the standings, matching the Flyers' total. They were helped by Philadelphia's 3-2 regulation loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs last night.
Although the standings may list the Penguins as still in 5th because the Flyers continue to have one game in hand on Pittsburgh, the Penguins have more wins than Philadelphia, 42-41, which would be the first tiebreaker. I have them in 4th for that reason.
The Penguins moved 1 point ahead of the Carolina Hurricanes as well, and put the 9th place Florida Panthers 5 points back again.
Pittsburgh has 2 huge games on back-to-back nights against both of those clubs away from home this weekend. First up is Carolina on Saturday and then the Panthers in an unusual 5 PM late afternoon tilt on Sunday.
The Penguins are now a remarkable 15-2-3 under Bylmsa. After finishing their franchise-record 8 game home stand 6-1-1, they continue to look like a team nobody will want to face in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The Penguins also are only 6 points back of New Jersey and, with the Devils slumping, I don't think one can completely rule out the Penguins maybe -- MAYBE -- catching them with 5 to play. What happens this weekend will go a long way towards determining whether Pittsburgh has a realistic shot at that.
More tomorrow.
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