Game One Recap (Penguins 4, Flyers 2)

I'm not sure I can adequately describe my disgust when, at 5:45 a.m. yesterday morning, I unrolled the morning newspaper, pulled out the sports section and read this column, which begins thus:

Is it too late to pick the Penguins in three games?

OK, enough with the wise-guy stuff, but, really, is there any reason to think the series with the Philadelphia Flyers will go more than four?

I don't see one.

I'm sure it's tough for the guys who follow the Steelers around for ten months out of the year to come up with column ideas during the Stanley Cup playoffs, but this is shortsighted and a little embarrassing. From the Flyers' side, they lost the first game of both series they won this year, so they've been in this place before. In their first game against Montreal they gave up their one-goal lead in the last minute of regulation and went on to lose in overtime. It's not uncommon to lose the first game, or even to get beaten pretty badly, as part of the process of getting accustomed to a new opponent. The Penguins lost the first game of all four series they won on the way to the Cup in '91.

It also shows a lack of knowledge of the history between these teams. In Game Five of the 1989 Patrick Division Mario Lemieux scores five goals and nine points and the Penguins take a 3-2 series lead over the Flyers. I was lucky enough to be there, and I'll be a fan forever. The Flyers won the last two and the series. In 2000, the Penguins won the first two games of the series in Philadelphia. Then the Flyers won the next four (or five, if the 5-OT game counts as two) and put the Penguins away. So when I repeat the "it's only one game" mantra after this win, I really mean it.

And it's not like this game was in hand at any time, and was fairly up for grabs until Malkin's shorthanded goal midway through the second. I'm impressed that the Penguins kept the Flyers off the board over the last forty-seven minutes of the game, but they'll have to play even better in front of the crease if they're going to win the series. Critics keep wondering when Fleury's going to have a bad game, like the one Biron had Friday night. He keeps responding that he's not with momentum-preserving saves like the one pictured above, a sweet poke check that left R.J. Umberger unable to get a shot off on a breakaway that might have been his team's best scoring opportunity in the third period.

I'm a man with straight priorities, so I only got to see the last ten minutes live. I had escorted our middle daughter to the annual McKnight Elementary Father-Daughter '50s sock hop. The mp3 jockey started the night by giving periodic updates, but stopped in response to the outcry of dads taping/DVRing the game who wanted to remain agnostic. During one interminable round of The Limbo, a dull roar could be heard at one point out in the hall. On the scent, I wandered over across the hall from the cafeteria. In the room where my oldest daughter takes music lessons, the classroom television had been tuned to the Outdoor Life Network, and Malkin had just scored the shorthanded goal that brought down the house. It was something of an anomaly that he was on the ice for a lengthy period of the Flyers' power play to begin with. Crosby and Malkin have seen occasional end-of-penalty-kill shifts, but not a lot of early- or middle-kill shifts.

It's been one bone to pick with Michel Therrien. Whether it's because he's just trying to protect their minutes, or trying to keep them out of the way of obvious shot-blocking situations, he's been unwilling to use his two young superstars to kill penalties, and on those occasions when the team's penalty kill has struggled, it's hard not to think that even if something is lost defensively by using Crosby or Malkin for the PK, it should be more than made up in the fact that teams would have to play cautiously with a man-advantage to keep from springing the Penguins on a breakaway or 2-on-1 the other way shorthanded. Following their trend in this year's playoffs, all four Penguins goals Friday night were scored off turnovers Friday night, so the team thrives on opportunities to make its opponents pay for mistakes, and to fear making them.

So, Malkin even being on the ice for that much of the kill was anomalous. And the way he scored-- on a close-range slapshot-- was even stranger. The Pensblog described the standard etiquette of the close-range slapper better than anybody:

On a play that will get you beat up if you do it in your friend's driveway, Malkin unleashes a slapshot from about 4 feet away from [Biron].

Besides that, it shows ridiculous amounts of confidence on Malkin's part. Even the best shooters have slapshots go offline fairly frequently. But not this guy.