GAME ONE RECAP (Red Wings 3, Penguins 1)

When the NHL returned from its year-long hiatus in 2005, several game rules were changed to increase scoring opportunities. If a team ices the puck, the faceoff not only comes back to their defensive end, but the players who were on the ice for that team must stay on the ice for the faceoff, while the other team is free to change lines. It's one of the subtler changes to the game, and while it's difficult to gauge how many goals per season it creates, it adds an extra deterrent to icing the puck, so I'm all for it. Last night, though, there's a good chance it cost the Penguins the game.

The first period was full of hitting and tight checking, and after the Red Wings scored the opening goal thanks to a fluky bounce off the endboards, they came in waves at the Penguins in an effort to extend the lead. The Penguins held down the fort until they evened the score right before the end of the second period on a strange goal of their own. Evgeni Malkin backchecked the WIngs into turning over the puck in the defensive zone, then took a slapshot that Chris Osgood stopped, but let skitter out from beneath his pads. He lunged to grab it, only to have Ruslan Fedotenko knock the puck out of his glove and shovel it into the empty net. It was just the sort of goal the Penguins will need to get if they're going to make the series competitive, and they'd got it with less than two minutes to go in the first.

The Penguins owned the better of the play in the second, even though they didn't get a goal to show for it. They significantly outshot the Wings and possessed the puck for the larger part of the period. They worked the dump-and-chase well and rolled all four lines, though the line combinations were perhaps unnecessarily overjumbled for a team that came in riding a five-game playoff winning streak. Toward the end of the second, though, the Wings came to life, and as they started to put on pressure in the Penguins' zone, Hal Gill and Rob Scuderi significantly overextended themselves, and the puck was iced. It was plain to see that they were spent, and Dan Bylsma used him timeout to try to give them a breather. It wasn't enough. Sid Crosby lost the faceoff, a few opportunities to clear the puck were blown, another crazy bounce off the endboards and off Fleury's leg later, and the Wings had their game-winning goal with less than a minute to go in the second, after the Penguins had turned in one of their better periods of the postseason, all things considered.

And then the Angel of Death appeared. When the second period ended a moment later and I turned the channel to avoid NBC's dreadful between-periods studio show, I found that the NFL Network was showing a full rebroadcast of Super Bowl XXX. Or, as I like to call it, Neil O'Donnell's friendly game of catch with Larry Brown.

[reverse-jinxin']There's no way the Penguins can beat that Red Wing machine. They're just too good.[/reverse-jinxin']

GAME FOUR RECAP (Penguins 4, Hurricanes 1)

Among the great and unique traditions found in the Stanley Cup playoffs, the best ones are the handshake line and the playoff beard. In previous posts, I've fawned at length over the handshake line. There was one of those tonight, and being on the right side of them never gets old. By this time in the postseason, the playoff beards have gotten about as good as they're going to get. Some guys, like Sidney Crosby, would not ever grow a beard at this point in their lives if not for the Stanley Cup playoffs. Sid's facial hair growth fits a pattern typically denoting rural poverty or Megan's Law registrant status. He's got long, sparse muttonchops, a thin mustache and a half-dozen hairs around his chin. Bill Guerin, on the other hand, couldn't have a single hair more on his face. Guerin's the only guy on the team who is older than I am, and his beard's got patches of white here and there, which is in keeping with the elder statesman role he's taken on since joining the team on the day of the trade deadline in exchange for a conditional draft pick. After the Penguins lost Marian Hossa and Ryan Malone in free agency last summer, Ray Shero tried to plug the holes by signing two free agent wings from the roster of the New York Islanders. Neither Miro Satan nor Ruslan Fedotenko put up impressive regular season numbers, and Satan didn't develop the chemistry with Sidney Crosby necessary to skate a regular shift on the top line. Given those developments, if I was a bit skeptical that adding another Islander to the Penguins roster was going to make a positive difference, can you blame me? Add to that the fact that Guerin had been underwhelming in recent playoff years-- he joined the Sharks in a deadline deal in 2007 and managed only two assists in nine games, and in his previous four playoff seasons, he'd scored only three goals and four assists over twenty-three games-- and I surely wasn't the only one who had considered Billy G.'s likely playoff contributions with the soft bigotry of low expectations. It turns out that all three Islanders have made valuable contributions, and it's fair to say that without the timely goals scored by Guerin and Fedotenko, the Penguins wouldn't be playing in the finals for a second consecutive year.

And there Guerin was, at the 12:10 mark of the second period, skating furiously with the speed of a man ten or fifteen years younger and scoring the goal that drove a stake through the Hurricanes' comeback chances and ruined the night of the RBC Center's weirdly-thrilled siren operator, pictured at left. It's been said more than once that hi-def's widescreen compositions and additional lines of resolution give the biggest boost to hockey among the televised spectator sports, but for my money the DVR has made all the difference in improving the at-home viewing experience. Football and baseball are sports made up of short bursts of action with a common starting point-- the snapping or pitching of the ball. Basketball, for its part, has frequent scoring and the resultant restarts from inbounding keep play from going on, unbroken, for extended periods of time. Hockey is different. Scoring is comparatively infrequent, and often play extends for a long period of time between goals, ping-ponging around and between players and teams. It's easy to look at the butterfly effect leading backward from a goal. This goal came from this shot, which was created by this turnover and that bounce, and so on and so on. The rewind feature of DVR technology has opened the anatomy of a hockey game up to the casual fan.

In the case of Guerin's goal, it began with Evgeni Malkin drawing a penalty that perhaps shouldn't have been called. He was checked by a Hurricane and struck by a high stick, but it may well have been his own stick. On the ensuing power play, Carolina's Eric Staal took the puck from the Penguins and entered their zone on a mission to get a short-handed goal. Staal had been criticized for not showing up in the series, but he was the best player on the ice in the early part of Game Four. He scored a nifty wraparound goal less than two minutes into the game in spite of the fact that Marc-Andre Fleury seemed to be glued to the post. Staal threw his body around with abandon, and if not for Cam Ward giving up a terrible goal to Max Talbot with less than two minutes to go in the first, the teams would have been tied halfway through the game. As it stood, if Staal scores a shorty there, the score is tied and the momentum is all Carolina's. As Staal broke in on his rush, Guerin backchecked and held the Hurricane who was trailing the play through the slot and looking for a juicy rebound. Staal never got a shot off, but Guerin's holding drew a whistle and ended the power play thirteen seconds after it started. After the teams played four-on-four, the Hurricanes found themselves with the briefest of power plays. Guerin busted out of the box and went directly to the right point, where Anton Babchuk had been inserted for the first time in the series to take booming slapshots on the man-advantage. Guerin got in Babchuk's way and swept the puck away from him and out to center ice, where Sid Crosby jumped on it and took off. Crosby swung wide to give himself room, and Guerin skated like a madman to catch up to the twenty-one year-old. Crosby sold the shot, then swung the pass across the slot for Guerin's tap-in.

Bill Guerin's now got seven goals and seven assists in seventeen playoff games with the Penguins. That's not quite a point per game, but it's light years ahead of the sub-.333 ppg of Guerin's recent playoff tenure. Can we just say at this point that Sidney Crosby is the elixir of youth and playoff accomplishment? Sure, we can. The guy who skated on Sid's right last year, Marian Hossa, arrived at the '08 trade deadline with a reputation for being a playoff underachiever. Sid helped him bury that bad rap-- Hossa scored twelve goals and fourteen assists in twenty games last year and would have got at least a few Conn Smythe votes if the Penguins had finished the job. This year, Hossa's got six goals and six assists in sixteen games, which approximates his playoff output from his pre-Penguin days, and is less than what Guerin's done this year on Sid's wing. Hossa would have cost the Penguins more than seven million a year, while Guerin's cost to the Penguins is less than a million dollars and a third-round draft pick.

GAME THREE RECAP (Penguins 6, Hurricanes 2)

The Hurricanes got exactly what they wanted to get in the early stages of Game Three. They scored an early goal in the first four minutes to take a lead and get the crowd involved. They had been undefeated when scoring first. Some sloppy penalty-killing allowed the Penguins to tie the game, but Carolina killed another penalty and Ward continued to play very, very well in keeping the Penguins off the board with about a minute to go in the first period. You take a tie into the first intermission, then regroup and try to come out harder in the second period.

And then it happened. The Crosby line started a rush with Guerin taking a lead pass that was behind him, then shuffling the puck between his skates and onto his stick. He took a few strides, then sent a long backhand saucer pass across to the far post, in a path to intersect where Sidney Crosby would be in a moment. Joni Pitkanen had played the diffuse 2-on-1 to break up the pass, but he swung and missed on the floating disc, and it came right to Crosby's backhand, and he deflected it past Ward. Then Bylsma puts Malkin out to close out the remainder of the period. The puck is dumped into the Carolina zone and instead of rattling around the boards, it hits a linesman and stops. The closest guy to the puck is Malkin, and he retrieves the puck, cuts along the goal line and puts a shot between Ward's pads. And puts the game out of reach.

GAME TWO RECAP (Penguins 7, Hurricanes 4)

Another non-recap here for the most part. I covered a client meeting in Washingon County, and by the time I got into my car and turned the radio on, Malkin had just scored his second goal and put the Penguins up 5-4. I've sort of liked revisiting the experience of radio being my only access. Of course, it's significantly easier to take when I'm sure I can see the highlights later.

And what highlights they were. Evgeni Malkin's hat trick was compressed into a neatly-digestible youtube within an hour or so of the game ending, and if the Penguins don't win another game this postseason, this game alone will keep fans warm until next spring. His first and second goals were scored on the doorstep, which is great for lots of reasons. Malkin's usually at his deadliest when he's taking a hard wrist shot, one-timer or slap shot from the slot or the circles. There's been a lot of mention this year about how Sidney Crosby has reinvented himself as a goal-scorer by hanging around the net for jam-ins and other short-range garbage goals. They all count the same, right? Geno apparently got the memo, and got two of those Thursday night.

The first goal is a pretty neat example of a timely personnel change. For about the millionth time in these playoffs, the Staal-Cooke-Kennedy line was controlling the puck deep in the opponent end on a steady forecheck, but then Staal realized he was gassed and went to the bench for a quick change. Malkin hopped over the boards and immediately went full bore, turning quickly to avoid the blueliner at the point and then beelined straight for the right post. He'd been on the ice for less than ten seconds and was there for a rap-in. As an aside, if there's a Pittsburgh-Detroit rematch in the Finals this year (and I'm way, way ahead of myself), here's reason #1 why one might expect the result won't be the same: the chemistry and consistent forecheck of the Staal line. They won't fill the net, but they'll wear out five of your players for fifteen minutes a game, and then you get to stop Crosby and Malkin.

The best thing about the second goal is that when the Penguins began to sustain possession in the Carolina zone, the crowd-- sensing that it was one of those nights for Malkin-- started chanting "Geno, Geno" and, almost as if to make it so, Malkin responded with more great rebound work to turn a tied game into a lead the Penguins wouldn't relinquish.

The third goal will deservedly get all the attention. Malkin takes the faceoff and pushes it forward, where it hits off the boards and waits for him to gather it in. The still photo at the top of this post is a pretty good indication of how close the defensive coverage was on him as he skated behind the net and out the other side. There wasn't a lot of room there, and Carolina had been burned enough by Seventy-One that he was going to be shadowed in the defensive end. Even so, he turned quickly to get a sliver of space and threw a nearly-blind backhand on net, and put it right where it had to be. Good stuff. Am I gonna dwell on the lackluster defensive end work that led to the Penguins giving up four goals? Not at all. Maybe the firewagon hockey of the 1980s isn't dead yet.

GAME ONE RECAP (Penguins3, Hurricanes 2)

(Note: Owing to my needing to cover a client's public meeting and my DVR being overstuffed with movies I've been unable to get to, I missed the first period and listened to the second on the radio during the drive home. This recap, thus, isn't much of a recap.) Miro Satan opened the scoring for the Penguins tonight by taking a lead pass after coming out of the penalty box. He broke in alone on Cam Ward, dipped his shoulder like he was going to shade left and take a forehand wrist shot, then cut right and crossed over to his backhand. He'd left Ward in the dust, and all he had to do was get his backhand on net. He did, and the Penguins took a lead they never relinquished.

It was Satan's first playoff goal, but his fifth playoff point. He was stuck back into the lineup after it was concluded, based on ample visual evidence, that Petr Sykora has hit a wall. I don't know whether Sykora would have overcome his scoreless run if he'd been left in the lineup, but the team couldn't afford to wait for him forever. Satan took his lineup spot, though not his spot on Evgeni Malkin's right wing, and contributed modestly at first. Though he didn't score in two playoff games against Philadelphia and one against Washington, he got some shots on net and even dirtied himself up a bit along the boards. Then things started to click with him offensively in Game Four against the Capitals. With the Penguins trying to restore a two-goal lead against the Capitals, Bill Guerin blocked a clearing attempt at the right point of the Capitals' zone and the puck was knocked onto Satan's stick with all of the Capitals' players breaking the wrong way out of the zone. Sid Crosby reversed direction and broke for the Capitals' net, and Satan threaded a pass through the lone defenseman's legs and onto Sid's stick for the easy tap-in. It was such a sweet assist that before conducting any serious goal celebration, Sid pointed directly at Satan to say, that's all you. Then, in the critical Game Five win on the road, Satan got a shift with Jordan Staal in a scoreless game and worked a nifty along-the-endboards give-and-go to set Staal up for the opening goal. He went scoreless in the Game Six loss, then assisted on two goals in the Game Seven extravaganza.

Maybe most impressively, Satan has managed to transform himself into a crunch-time contributor without bludgeoning any members of the local or national hockey media. Read any media report about the Penguins' playoff run that mentions Satan and you're sure to see a digression that recounts Satan's demotion to the Wilkes Barre/Scranton farm team at the trade deadline to clear cap space for Bill Guerin to come in and take his spot on the top line. And they keep mentioning it and mentioning it, to make sure that if there's one person out there that doesn't consider Satan's season to be a whisker away from futility, well maybe they will now. The local Fox Sports affiliate conducts player interviews between periods, and in the midst of the Game Seven festivities, with the Penguins up 2-0, Dan Potash holds the microphone in front of Miro and leads with-- you're not going to believe this-- the "Weeks ago you were demoted to the minors..." line. Satan wryly mumbled something about being glad Potash reminded him of that, since he'd nearly forgot about it. It was a nice moment. And if the Penguins end up achieving what they're aiming to achieve, Satan the cast-off will be a significant reason why.

GAME SEVEN RECAP (Penguins 6, Capitals 2)

I'm sure the fact that Game Seven wasn't close disappointed a lot of people, and I'm sure that I don't mind not being one of them. Sure, the series had been exceedingly close by most relevant measures to that point-- both teams had won three games, the Penguins had scored one more cumulative goal and Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby had scored roughly the same number of points-- but there were two very telling areas in which the series hadn't been close. Going into Game Seven, the Penguins had taken 226 shots to the Capitals' 159. That imbalance wasn't an anomaly; the Penguins had generated more, and longer, offensive chances through the first six games. But it didn't mean anything because of the second imbalance: Simeon Varlamov had played out of his mind and turned away those scoring chances at a rate that was better than what Marc-Andre Fleury had managed. The buzz going into Game Seven was whether Fleury might show up to steal a game in the series, as he had at least once in the preceding series.

The post-series handshake line continues to be the best tradition in professional sports. A mere moment or two after the final horn sounded, the teams lined up and the drama of conciliation played out. Ovechkin and Sergei Gonchar spoke for a moment and seemed to bury the hatchet. A day earlier, Gonchar tersely refused to disclose his opinion on the cleanliness of Ovechkin's knee-shot on him in Game Four, and thereby disclosed his opinion. I'm sure it helped a lot to brighten Gonchar's disposition toward his countryman that he was able to play in Game Seven and that his team will live to play another day, but the two mended fences in an encouraging way. Everyone was anticipating the handshake between Ovechkin and Crosby, of course, and that they exchanged a few words beyond a perfunctory handshake suggests that while they'll always be rivals, they're not contemptuous of each other. After Crosby shook Ovechkin's hand, next in line for the Penguins was Matt Cooke, who greeted his former teammate in a moment of mutually-toothless warmth. Next up was Marc-Andre Fleury, and Ovechkin and he shook hands and exchanged some words that were pretty easy to guess. Ovechkin tormented Fleury for six full games, then Fleury came to life when it counted the most.

At the three-minute mark of a scoreless first period, Ovechkin took a lead pass along the left wing boards. Rob Scuderi was widely thought to have done a great job containing Ovechkin, in spite of the fact that he scored eight goals and six assists in the series. I'd hate to see, statistically, what a subpar defensive job against Ovechkin would have looked like. Anyway, on this occasion, Ovechkin snuck behind Scuderi, took the lead pass and broke in alone on Fleury. The moment of anticipation for a crowd when a guy on the home team is swooping in on a breakaway is pretty neat-- there's a collective holding of breath, and people might stand, or at least half-stand. Just look at the expressions on the faces in the second picture. If Ovechkin scores, the crowd detonates with enthusiasm and can probably keep it up a good, long while. Ovechkin cuts across the crease and shoots glove hand-side, right into where Fleury had set up. Yeah, the Penguins still had to score their goals, but in all other respects, the game was over.

And so it goes on. Penguins-Capitals: same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. There aren't any players on either team who played the last time the teams met in the playoffs in 2001, but it's the same as it ever was. I saw myself in a montage of my life set against the backdrop of Penguin beatdowns of the Capitals, set to that stupid Time of Your Life song. 1991 and 1992, I'm a college student watching the series in dormitory lounges at IUP. In 1995 I'm a law student watching the pivotal game at my sister's first apartment, a dreary first-floor place in State College. In 1996 I'm watching the 4-OT marathon alone during finals week in my third year of law school, yelling out at 2:30 in the morning in the apartment Ali and I rented after we got married. In 2000 and 2001 I'm watching the series in our first house in Churchill, with a baby or toddler on my lap. And now my kids are big enough to watch this annual rite of spring with me.

GAME SIX RECAP (Capitals 5, Penguins 4)

Nobody can say that they didn't get their money's worth, or that this has been less than compelling. I agree fully with Bruce Boudreau: If only this was for the Cup. After tonight's Game Seven is played and we can look at the series as a whole, it's pretty tough to imagine either the Conference Finals or the Cup Finals being less than a disappointment by comparison. And that's regardless of the outcome.

Through six games the Penguins have held a two-goal lead for a collective 19:43 (all coming during Game Four), and the Capitals held a two-goal lead for 4:07 during Game Two. The other 357:13 collective minutes of regulation and overtime have seen the teams tied or separated by a single goal. Remember the nineties and early 2000s, when any lead in the third period of a playoff game would pretty much guarantee both a win and a thoroughly boring remainder of the game? The Penguins and Capitals have rid us of that albatross. The team scoring first has lost five of the six games. No lead is safe. In Games Five and Six, the visiting team took a lead midway through the third period, only to have the home team tie up the game with 4:08 and 4:18 remaining, respectively. We've had three sudden death overtime games. Playoff hockey is a white-knuckle spectator sport as it is, with scoring coming from the most predictable and unpredictable places. By and large, the series has been six games on the edge of your seat.

Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin have played like superstars. In Game Six the Capitals scored five goals, but Ovechkin didn't score any of them. I don't think anybody expected Crosby, the assist man, to have as many goals in the series as Ovechkin, but there it is. And if you'd told me before the series that Mark Eaton and Kris Letang would each score more goals than Mike Green, I never would have believed it. So trends and expectations both succeed and fail.

Hal Gill was on the ice for both Capital goals within :27 in the second period, and actually got wedged behind Fleury and the net on Kozlov's magnificent sharp-angle goal that put the Capitals ahead for the first time in the game. It's at that point that we see the ill effects of all those Gonchar minutes being played by other defensemen. I expect Gonchar to return tonight and make a game effort of playing both power-play and even-strength minutes.

The teams have been ridiculously even, except at one place: goaltending. Thus far, Varlamov has outplayed Fleury. The only way the Penguins win tonight is if he outplays his counterpart.

GAME FIVE RECAP (Penguins 4, Capitals 3)

Through five games, this series has been better than advertised. I'm colored by the to-date outcomes, obviously, but the closeness of the games (four one-goal games and one two-goal finish, with two ending in overtime), the lead changes and late tying goals have made this a remarkable week of playoff games. The league's marquee players have taken turns showing each other up. Sidney Crosby was silent in Game Five, but the slack was picked up by the lines centered by Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal. And what more can you say about Ovechkin? Rob Scuderi has been very, very effective in containing him, at one point perfectly breaking up a Ovechkin partial breakaway without taking a penalty, but the guy still scored two goals, including the tying goal with four minutes to go. His first goal was scored when Brooks Orpik was on the ice and backed up a step or two away from Ovechkin, which gave him all the time, space and screen he needed to fire off a shot, while the tying goal was scored while Scuderi was on the ice, but Ovechkin moved to the right side to get away from him. The guy is unbelievable. If his teammate Alexander Semin was even remotely involved in the series, the Penguins wouldn't be ahead.Don't look now, but Miro Satan has reinvented himself as a playmaker. For the second game in a row, he made a perfect pass to set up a goal.

Referees don't like to call penalties in overtime in general, but in certain situations it's compelled or the game becomes a joke. Along similar lines, while it was a swallow-the-whistles game from the start and there were only three regulation penalties called, if the referees had ignored the obvious too-many-men infraction the Penguins committed, it would have been a mockery. It really doesn't matter at what point you are in the game-- a player who is tripped on a breakaway has to draw a penalty, and no one on the Capitals' bench disputes that. The team's owner and several of its vocal supporters think there should have been an interference call right before the Penguins' goal was scored. That call is never, ever made, though.

Here's how it went down: as the Penguins' power play was winding down, Kris Letang made a hurried and ill-advised breakout pass to Crosby that David Steckel was waiting to pick off. Steckel stepped in front of the pass, then entered the Penguins' zone, but didn't skate the puck deep or dump it into the corner. The only reason the game was still being played at this point was because Steckel missed an open net on the Capitals' first shift of overtime. Boyd Gordon, the other penalty-killing forward, broke into the offensive zone, then turned in the slot with his back to the Penguins' net, as if to take a pass. Steckel held it for an instant, then took a slap shot that went wide of the net and richocheted out to the Penguins' Chris Kunitz, who sent to puck up to Malkin. As the puck went wide, Gordon turned his head to follow its patch and he and Phillipe Boucher ran into each other. Boucher didn't alter his path, but when Gordon turned to chase the puck Boucher was in his way. Boucher didn't look like he'd set a pick, but he didn't try to get out of the way, either. Is that penalty called in the regular season? Sometimes, although not if it doesn't appear that Boucher tried to get in Gordon's way. Is that penalty called in the playoffs? No, almost never. Is it called in overtime? Absolutely never. Now pause a moment to reflect on the fact that if Ovechkin doesn't blow up Sergei Gonchar's knee on Friday night, Boucher doesn't get that close to the ice without buying a seat on the glass.

The puck is sent up the ice to Malkin, and Sergei Federov skates backward with Malkin on defense. Federov poke-checks the puck away from Malkin, and it nearly causes Malkin to be offside on himself, but the puck hits his skate and caroms right back to where it needed to be. Malkin takes Federov wide and beats him, then throws a backhander at the net. The rest, as they say, is a random bounce off a well-positioned defenseman.

GAME FOUR RECAP (Penguins 5, Capitals 3)

It's a good thing there were only 48 hours between Games Three and Four. Just imagine how much complaining the Capitals would have felt compelled to do had there been a longer layover between games. If they weren't whining about the officiating, they were taking issue with a Yanni concert or expressing moral outrage at a television camera's shot of Ovechkin getting ready for the game. In retrospect, the 24 hour interval between last night's game and tonight's is a good thing, if only because it allows for only a single news cycle.
Among some pretty silly grievances, that last one is the best. A Versus television camera tries to get a pre-game image of Ovechkin gearing up for battle, and they get a whiteboard in the background. The Capitals have written their super top-secret plans into how to prevail in the art of war on this whiteboard. There are inscrutable Zen insights such as "We have got to get it deep and have a great forecheck," and "Have our legs and check our asses off." I am guessing they did not have sufficient room for "Score more goals than the other team." It is likely that the Penguins were not expecting this crafty strategy, and that some team official was assigned to monitoring the broadcast in search of nuggets just like this one. You can just imagine some sallow-skinned intern sitting in front of a bank of television screens, wiping his glasses and suddenly yelling out, "Jackpot! They're gonna try to win the special teams battle!"
More troubling, however, were their announced keys to Game Four. I suppose they accomplished all of those objectives.
At the post-game presser, Ovechkin maintained his innocence, and he's the only one who knows whether he stuck his knee out there with an intent to make Gonchar come up limping. It's fair to ask, at this point, whether the sport's code will be able to protect Ovechkin indefinitely.
It wasn't a great night for goaltending, but Fleury gave up fewer bad goals than Varlamov, and it made all the difference.
Meanwhile, the Penguins got going some of its previously-quiet supporting cast members. Miro Satan was signed last summer in the hope he could develop some chemistry with Sidney Crosby. It never happened, but his signing felt like it was totally worth it when he threaded a pass through Erskine's skates on a 2-on-1 to set Sid up for a tap-in that restored, temporarily, the Penguins' two-goal lead.
My guess is that Gonchar will be out for the game, and that Phillipe Boucher will get the call to replace him and step in paired with Brooks Orpik. That will pay off on the power play-- Boucher's almost as good as Gonchar at getting shots on net-- but it will hurt them defensively. And on the subject of defense, I'll be curious to see if Bruce Boudreau continues to match Ovechkin's line against the Scuderi-Gill blueline pairing. Scuderi made Ovechkin an afterthought for a second consecutive game, and if I've got the last change, I'd be thinking about trying my luck against another pairing, namely Letang and Eaton.
All other things being equal, I'd still rather be the Capitals at this point than the Penguins, given that the home team's held serve throughout and the law of averages suggests that Ovechkin's due for a breakout game. But it will be fun to watch it play out.

GAME THREE RECAP (Penguins 3, Capitals 2)

When all else fails, you flip the script. In Games One and Two, the Penguins played pretty much the same game. They came out strong and generated early chances which led to getting the opening goal. Then they expended a lot of energy trying to add to the lead, only to be stoned by a hot goalie. Then they watched as the Capitals were far stronger in the third period and put them away.

To that end, it was pretty easy to see the silver lining when the Capitals scored a bizarre fluke goal a minute and change into the first. Mike Green dumped the puck into the Penguins zone and it skittered around the boards to the zamboni door, where it took a weird hop, uh, right into the high slot. But that's no big deal, right? Marc-Andre Fleury should be in position to make a save on an unscreened long-distance shot, shouldn't he? Oh, well. I suppose he would have been in position if he hadn't ventured behind the net and inexplicably lost his stick. Oh, well. Maybe the closest Capital won't be a sharpshooter. Oh, that's Ovechkin.

An early goal for the road team takes the fans out of the game early, so the building was quiet while both teams played a choppy and sloppy first period. There wasn't much of the crisp passing or great skating from either team in the first. Later we'd learn that the ice quality might have played a role in slowing down the teams. Bruce Boudreau called the ice "sticky," and the puck bounced progressively more as the night wore on. The difference is that the Penguins have played nearly fifty games on the ice this season alone, and over a dozen home playoff games in April and May over this season and last, so they're used to lousy ice.

So instead of playing two great periods and losing in the third, the Penguins changed things up and played a lousy first and a great second and third. The question was whether the Capitals would be able to match their third period efforts from Games One and Two. This time, they didn't.

It didn't hurt that Rob Scuderi did a fantastic job of limiting Ovechkin's chances. Scuderi's not one of their most physical defensemen, but he's more positionally sound than anyone else on their blueline. In Games One and Two, Bruce Boudreau apparently tried to match lines to get the Russian line against the Scuderi-Gill pairing, and Dan Bylsma was only too happy to continue the matchup when the series landed in Pittsburgh. It's worth noting that in Ovechkin's Game Two ownership of the Penguins, his second goal came on the power play off the draw, and his third came when he was matched against the Gonchar-Orpik pairing. If-- and this is a pretty huge "if"-- Scuderi is able to replicate his even-strength success in keeping Ovechkin mostly to the perimeter and taking away his open ice and if-- and this is also a gigantic "if"-- the Penguins are able to stay out of the penalty box, they have a shot at winning this thing.

Of course, the best development of the night was Evgeni Malkin's decision to play a role in the series outcome. He hadn't been all that visible in the road games, and in comparison to the attention Ovechkin and Crosby received for their matching-goal-for-goal performances, Malkin had been on the outside looking in. It's not hard to imagine him minding that, though, if the team could still manage to win. Malkin's always seemed a little tentative when he's sharing an arena with Ovechkin. I don't know whether the shadow Ovechkin casts is so large that Malkin's shyness becomes all the more pronounced, or whether it's just because Ovechkin delights in taking runs at Malkin whenever he can, but when the two have played head-to-head, it never seemed to me that Malkin consciously elevated his intensity to the degree that Ovechkin does. A few minutes into the second, he turned the corner. He started to lug the puck with confidence, and made some strong moves to the net. He was sprung on a breakaway that didn't miss by much, and his puck possession forced the Capitals into taking at least two penalties, including the hooking call on Alexander Semin at 14:31 of the third that led to Malkin's go-ahead goal, a screened wrist shot that might be the deal-breaker, ladies.

Seeing Malkin hit his stride was such a nice reminder of how the best dominant players have different styles. Ovechkin's skating is like a furious, jerking blur, often ending with that windmill windup. Sidney Crosby's like the most talented grinder to play the game, with otherworldly passing skills but a playing style that's essentially built around an unparalleled work ethic. Malkin's fluid, comparatively upright posture looks more like Mario Lemieux's profile than anybody else's, right down to the fact that each of them sometimes looks to be skating slowly, all the better to hide a deceptive fifth gear. And when he's on, he can skate through everybody else on the ice with the puck, and they haven't got a prayer of taking it from him. Even tonight, when the puck bounced for everybody else, it stuck to Malkin's stick like it was glued on. I'd love to think the signature turning point of the series will be his marathon romp through the Capitals' offensive zone, around and through Semin and Ovechkin until the former took a penalty and the latter angrily slapped the puck down the other end of the ice when the referee blew the whistle.

None of it would have meant much without Kris Letang's overtime winner, of course, but the press jockeys who vote for the three stars know the score: Malkin was named first star, the crowd cheered and a fanbase breathed a sigh of relief. As we were filing out, we heard a louder-than-normal commotion ahead of us in the Arena's bowels. Turning the corner, we saw twenty or so people surrounding Malkin's dad, offering him congratulations and snapping cameraphone pictures. Malkin's parents have become the go-to reaction shot subjects in game telecasts over the past calendar year. They're not owner's-boxing-it, so they're the easily-spotted middle-aged Russian couple among all the people in jerseys. Malkin's play seemed to be even a notch better when his parents came to the States last year, so they're regarded as good luck charms. Mr. Malkin was loving the well-wishes, posing for pictures with everybody who asked and taking some guy's hat (as shown here). I said to my dad, "Hey-- see if you can get next to him and I'll get your photo." There's more commotion and noise and a blocked view and by the time I catch sight of them, my dad and Geno's dad are locked in a big celebratory hug, like they'd been comrades all their lives. Now that's a good night of hockey.

GAME TWO RECAP (Capitals 4, Penguins 3)

Boy, Ovechkin is something else. I'm not the only one who was thinking today about how amazing his shot is. It's fast and it's on-target. The guy's been in the league for only four years, but I'm sure I've seen him score at least a hundred goals on one-timers from the left dot. And I know he's scored at least fifty of them against the Penguins, including his first goal last night and the go-ahead power play goal he lasered in the third. I've developed an actual reflexive shudder when the Penguins play the Capitals; if the Capitals are on a power play or when Ovechkin's line is on the ice even-strength, I tense up whenever a pass floats over to the left circle, because I just know the TV camera will pan over to reveal Number Eight, cocked and ready to shoot. And more often than not, the shot is already long gone by the time the camera settles on him, and he's already halfway into some overly exuberant goal celebration.

On Ovechkin's second goal-- the one that put the Capitals ahead for the first time in the game-- he started to set himself up to take a pass after his guys got a criminally clean face-off win (by who, I'm not sure, but the Penguins are getting slaughtered in the face-off circle, and it's costing them at both ends of the ice). Ovechkin ground his legs, egg beater-style, about a half-dozen times to move quickly, laterally and create space between him and the nearest penalty-killer, Matt Cooke. It didn't hurt Ovechkin's efforts that Cooke got an interfering faceful of Alexander Semin to slow him down, but he still had to one-time the shot on net. He did, of course. I think I'm starting to get a taste of what it was like for other Wales Conference teams, most notably the Capitals, in the '91-'01 period when Mario Lemieux or Jaromir Jagr would absolutely turn out their lights in April or May.

The Penguins can talk all the want about how close the games have been, or how they just need to finish more scoring chances, but these two losses have got to be dispiriting, especially since the Capitals have flouted the playoff conventional wisdoms that scoring first is the key to winning and that third-period comebacks are hard to come by. Just as in Game One, the Penguins came out very strong in Game Two and did everything possible to get a second goal after they took the lead, only to have Varmalov rebound after allowing an early goal and shut the door. Sure, the highlight-reel saves are what get people's attention, but keeping it a one-goal game is the key. The Penguins' supporting cast threw everything into trying to get a second goal, only to wilt into the background when the Capitals tied up the game. Only the Penguins' captain seems committed to playing a full sixty minutes this series.

Game Two was a ridiculously entertaining game of hockey, with lots of skating and skill on display. Just think how great the remainder of the series will be if Evgeni Malkin decides to show up for it.

GAME ONE RECAP (Capitals 3, Penguins 2)

No significant recap here, as I opted instead to take Leah, Ruby and Virginia to what must have been the greatest high school production of LES MISERABLES ever staged. Varlamov's desperation stick save on Crosby to keep it 2-2 was admittedly otherworldly. I liked the confident quotes coming out of the Penguins' dressing room after the loss; they know what they need to do better. Scoring a power play goal every now and then is at the top of the list.
More extended comments after Game Two, and a first-person account of Game Three.

GAME SIX RECAP (Penguins 5, Flyers 3)

Here's the caption that runs below this photo in the online edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Fyers fans are stunned after Syndey's Crosby goal in the second period. (Ron Cortes / Staff Photographer)" We can try to imagine that the "Syndey" is as unintentional as the "Fyers," but there are several more photos featuring Crosby, and they're all labeled with the girl name misspelling.

The worm has turned. The Flyers and Penguins both entered the NHL in 1967. The Flyers were almost immediately successful, and won Stanley Cups in 1974 and 1975. The Penguins were immediately inept, and filed for their first bankruptcy at the same time the Flyers were winning it all. The Flyers' main rivals have been the coastal Patrick Division teams-- the Rangers, Devils and Capitals. In comparison to that white-hot hatred, the Flyers and their followers have generally regarded the Penguins as the little brother that's too small-time to be a true rival. And why shouldn't they have felt that way? The Penguins once went--what?-- fifteen years without winning a single game in Philadelphia. And even when the Penguins started putting together a successful team in the late eighties and the regular-season results began to even out, the Flyers still walked all over them in the postseason. They put away the Penguins in a second-round series in 1989 after the Penguins took a 3-2 series lead. They humiliated a one-line-deep Penguins team in five games in 1997 and, in the process, sent Mario Lemieux off to his first semi-permanent retirement. Maybe most painfully, the Flyers rebounded after dropping the first two games to the Penguins at home in the 2000 playoffs to win their second-round series in six games. Three playoff matchups, and three beatdowns. So you can't blame me for thinking there's something surreal about the Penguins being on the right side of a handshake line with the Flyers in two consecutive years. Maybe it took forty years, but the nail is turning on the hammer.

Hockey's a strange sport. There are two ways in which a team can be said to be playing better than another team. The first, and only significant measure, is who scores more goals. The second way in which a team plays better than another is to win the little battles, like faceoffs and possession scrums along the boards, and avoiding neutral zone mistakes, playing well in your own end and making sure that scoring chances end up with a decent shot on net. The second measure often, but not always, follows the first. A goalie playing out of his mind can help a team that's losing by the second measure still come out on top of the game. In Games Two, Three and Four, the Flyers played better than the Penguins by the second measure, but they only won Game Three. In Games Five and Six, the Penguins played better than the Flyers, but still stared down a 3-0 deficit a few minutes into the second period. Cue Max Talbot, a nonpugilist, picking a fight with Daniel Carcillo, a frequent Flyer fighter. I'll always be ambivalent about the existence of fisticuffs in hockey, and one of the things I like best about the Stanley Cup Playoffs is that you see almost no fighting majors. Still, it's hard to deny that at times a fight settles a game down, or inspires a team to play with more urgency. And given that the score was 3-2 a few minutes later, I'm not inclined to argue with the Penguins, who all claimed afterward that seeing their teammate pummeled mercilessly turned the game around for them.

The ultimate irony, of course, is that with the Penguins' series against the big, nasty Flyers nearly certainly headed to the crapshoot of a Game Seven, the Penguins used a fight to reverse the course of the game. Fedotenko's goal to get the Penguins on the board was just cleaning up the garbage after Malkin willed himself to the net. If there's a quicker whistle there, maybe the comeback never happens. The Penguins' second goal was even neater. Since newly-de-interimed Dan Bylsma took over the team, he'd made a significant tweak to get the team's defensemen more involved in the team's offense. No big deal for the offensive blueliners like Gonchar and Letang, but for the stay-at-home guys who make up the 66% of their normal top-six? Since then, we've been treated to Hal Gill finishing on a 2 on 1 and everybody else pinching in to keep offensive-zone chances alive. They kept the defensive exposure created by this adjustment to a minimum by rotating a high forward out, but the playoffs dictates a safer approach to team defense. Or so says conventional wisdom. So when, on a four-on-four stretch coming right after penalties were dished out over the Flyers taking offense to the Fedotenko goal, who seriously thinks Mark Eaton is going to be the second man into the zone, and who thinks he's going to go straight down the slot? I didn't think it would happen, and neither did the Flyers, who let him go right in and baseball-slap a deflected puck into the net. When Sid tied the game a little while later on yet another baseball-swing deflection, the handwriting was on the wall. All that remained were a few more half-hearted "Crosby Sucks" chants and a Sergei Gonchar goal to close it out.

April, 2009 Film Viewings

4.7 Alien (Scott, 1979)
4.10 Adventureland (Mottola, 2009)
4.11 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956)
4.16 Le Plaisir (Ophuls, 1952)
4.19 Red Road (Arnold, 2006)
4.20 Doubt (Shanley, 2008)
4.22 Comedy of Power (Chabrol, 2006)
4.24 A Weekend at the Beach with Jean-Luc Godard (Schneider, 1979)
4.30 Serbis (Mendoza, 2008)