Pittsburgh Penguins' goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury was one of the biggest reasons why the Penguins were not able to secure a victory in the second contest of their 5-game road trip on Monday in what ended up being a 4-3 loss to the Minnesota Wild at the Excel Center, and I didn't hesitate to call Fleury out for his play in this space.
He was fighting the puck a lot and relying much more on his athleticism than positioning -- which is the surest sign he's not on top of his game.
Just as Fleury will get criticism from me when it's deserved, I'll be the first one to give him praise when it's justified.
Like last night after his performance in stopping 37 of 38 Calgary shots in the Pens' 3-1 victory over the Flames.
True to his usual form of bouncing back after a poor performance, Fleury was sharp from the drop of the puck last night. His position was more sound and he was especially strong around the net on plays in close.
Two of his biggest saves came in the 3rd period when the Flames outshot Pittsburgh 16-5. During those 20-minutes, Fleury stopped Calgary forward Nigel Dawes on a breakaway and rejected a point-blank attempt from 15 feet by Flames' center Jamie Lundmark.
That was more than enough to help goals by center and Captain Sidney Crosby, and RW's Bill Guerin and Tyler Kennedy stand up for the victory.
Crosby got his 30th in the first period on a sensational individual effort, going past Flames' all-around defenseman Jay Bouwmeester before cutting sharply in front of Calgary goaltender Mikka Kiprusoff and somehow flipping the puck by him.
After the Flames tied the score, Guerin scored on the power play, deflecting a point shot from Sergei Gonchar to help the Pens take the lead.
That's right.
You read that correctly.
Pittsburgh scored on the power play.
That 2-1 advantage stood until the final two minutes of the game when Tyler Kennedy broke towards the slot uncontested from the near wall and showed patience he hasn't shown since the first 2 weeks of the season, holding on to the puck long enough to get Kiprusoff to go down and then calmly deposit it behind him for the final margin of victory.
Overall, the Penguins played a much better game last night. Now, they weren't foolproof. Evegni Malkin, for example, continued to struggle. He had another bad giveaway that almost led to a Calgary goal in the second period, and had little impact offensively. But aside from Fleury having a strong game, the Penguins' team as a whole was much better all over the ice, not turning the puck over as much and being more positionally sound.
And even though they had only 27 shots on Kiprusoff, they had a number of good scoring chances.
The trick for Pittsburgh is to now try and keep it going. Their game tonight against a bad Oilers club at Rexall Place presents them with another opportunity to do that and capture momentum that has been as elusive to them over the last month as Diane Lane.
At least until she wants to be caught.
Like in Murder at 1600, or -- better still -- in an apartment hallway in Unfaithful.
Anyway, Fleury has strung together 6 straight games now where he's been bad/good/bad/good/bad/good. The power play has been terrible. And there's no sign that Malkin is going to come out of his slump anytime soon, but you just have to hope that he's going to break out sometime.
Those probably have been the 3 biggest issues ailing the Boys of Winter recently.
If Fleury can get things going and the power play can actually score again -- two out of three ain't bad.
Recap tomorrow.
Let's Go Pens!
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2 comments:
What's your opinion on what malkin needs to do to get back to his usual play. I feel like the line change to put talbot back down with him has helped. And he's definitely been way more active in the zone. It feels like he's starting to gain some momentum. But his turnovers are killing. What'd you think?
I actually was planning a post about Malkin in the coming days, setting forth my thoughts on his slump and what he needs to do to turn things up a few notches, so look for that hopefully over the holiday weekend. For now, we'll continue to watch to see how Talbot looks next to him, and on whether Malkin cuts down on the turnovers he's been committing lately.
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