Game Five Recap (Penguins 3, Rangers 2 [OT])

That picture of the Penguins celebrating, with the Rangers consoling Henrik Lundquist in the foreground, is brought to us by Marian Hossa. Every time the guy misses a net these playoffs, somebody brings up his past failures or points out how much the Penguins gave up to get him. I found myself thinking midway through yesterday's game that for all of the great things he does, I can't see paying him $7,000,000 per year. Then there was that power play more than halfway through the second that put the Penguins on the board. Yeah, the goal he scored was great, but I loved even more his effort when one of the Rangers had apparently cleared the puck out of the zone. Hossa lunged out and slid on his belly to knock the puck back toward a teammate and keep the power play alive. It was the dive that killed the Rangers. Snicker.

We saw a lot of things we'd seen before in the series. With the last-change advantage, Therrien kept the Staal line and Hal Gill out against the Jagr line, and despite leaving it all out on the ice, Jagr had no room to operate and was shut down. The Penguins played good positional defense. Ryan Whitney may have misplayed that 2-on-1 that led to the Rangers' first goal, but otherwise the Penguins' blueline was really solid all series long.

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