I thought last evening's nationally televised game at Mellon Arena between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the St. Louis Blues would be a pretty competitive affair.
And it was.
If you were trying to place wagers on exactly how quickly or how badly the Penguins were going to run the Blues into the ground.
The Penguins piled on St. Louis last night to the tune of a 5-1 victory -- a game that represented their 6th straight win -- but may have suffered the loss of a key component to their success in the process.
Defenseman Sergei Gonchar had an awkward collission along the boards in the 2nd period, and did not return to the game.
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review is reporting that Gonchar has a broken bone in his hand or wrist that will sideline him for at least a month.
Here's the piece:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/penguins/s_649048.html
While the Penguins have the talent and ability to compensate for the absence of #55, it is undeniable that losing Gonchar for an extended period would obviously be a significant blow to their ability to dominate opponents as they have recently.
If I get an update on Gonchar later today, I'll post it.
In the meantime, the Penguins were machine-like again last night.
They rolled to an early 2-0 first period lead on goals about a minute apart by Tyler Kennedy -- his 5th to lead the team -- and Evgeni Malkin. Geno's marker was a power-play tally.
In the 2nd period, the Penguins added 2 more in quick fashion to up their lead to 4-0. This time, Ruslan Fedotenko and Matt Cooke got the tallies. Like Malkin's goal, Rusty's marker was on the power play as well.
Paul Kariya finally got the Blues on the board later in that period and the Blues pulled starting netminder Chris Mason for former Penguin Ty Conklin to start the third period.
No matter.
Defenseman Alex Goligoski closed out the scoring in the final frame to give the Penguins their 5-1 victory.
The Blues just couldn't keep up with the Penguins last night. Pittsburgh outshot them by a whopping 20-3 margin in the first period, and by a 43-23 differential on the night. And everything Pittsburgh put in, they did it like they were sharpshooters.
Top corners.
Well-placed deflections.
Mason and Conklin were mostly helpless in net for St. Louis.
With the victory, Marc-Andre Fleury raised his record to 8-0 on the season. He now has a .930 save percentage and a 1.84 GAA.
So, while the Penguins now sit alone at the top of the Atlantic Division and NHL standings with an 8-1 mark in the season's first 9 games thanks largely to contributions from everyone, Gonchar's injury will now take center stage for the team.
Can they continue to roll without him?
Pittsburgh's next game is against the Florida Panthers on Friday night.
Like I said, more on Sarge when I hear it. For now, hope for the best.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment