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Greetings from the Great Green North…. Pens/Habs notes

by Tony on 12/28/08 at 10:54 AM ET
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Greetings from a balmy NW Pennsylvania.

So much for any snow, had a record-high of 61 degrees here yesterday.  And I forgot the sunscreen.

I took care of my Timmy’s fix first thing this morning.  Tim Horton’s opened it’s first store here in Meadville in September with another store due to open in the spring.  The coffee is just addictive I tell ya, gotta bring some back home with me.  It didn’t help that a severe thunderstorm rolled through as I was there and flipped my dozen donuts over, but miraculously, they all stayed in the box.

Oh yeah, the hockey.

Ya gotta be somewhat satisfied with the effort last night by the Pens.  Lots of good physical play, good puck possession, and lots of good scoring opportunities.

Carey Price certainly stoned the Pens last night.  Outside of the bad bounce off the Habs D-man and the boards, plus the lightning-quick wrap around by Sidney Crosby, Price earned his looneys for sure.

The subject that just won’t go away, the powerplay, once again got the golden goose egg.  Not only that, but even in even strength, it’s readily apparent to me that the Penguins are almost pained to simply throw pucks on net, like so many of their opponents do to them.  That’s why most of them get 30-40 shots on goal per game.  But for whatever reason, the Pens want to make that extra pass, for the perfect shot opportunities.  How long will it take before they realize that dirty goals are the way of the NHL world nowadays.

Defensively, not a good outcome for the boys in Black and Vegas Gold last night.  It seemed they were so intent on applying pressure on the puck carrier, they forgot about their defensive assignments, and it burned them twice on the same type of play.

The game-winning goal was definitely a “soff” goal, as HCMT likes to call it.  Marc-Andre Fleury, if he wants to be regarded as one of the league’s best, simply must stop a puck like that.

Well, we’ll see what Tuesday brings for the Pens.  As I mentioned, my youngest son and I will be at the Igloo for the Bruins/Pens matchup (sect. E3, row H I believe if you’d like to say hello), should be a great game.  Actually, today we’ll be watching the Steelers game here (glad I didn’t fork over big bucks to watch this meaningless game), then heading about an hour and a half west to Cleveland to watch Lebron vs. Wade tonight.

Filed in: | The Confluence | Permalink
 Tags: Montreal+Canadiens, NHL-Hockey, Pittsburgh+Penguins,

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Welcome to The Confluence, a Pittsburgh Penguins blog since 2006.  Originally at Blogspot, then at MVN, The Confluence has over 1000 articles reporting Penguins news as well as jumping on my soapbox to opine constructive Penguins criticism.  My posts are regularly linked by hockey websites such as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Empty Netters and Yahoo!’s Puck Daddy, and I’ve done guest blogger spots on such websites as the New York Times.  I invite you to spend a little time and peruse the archives at all of the sites for some of my better work.  I am a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer, but don’t confuse me with my fellow Chief at A2Y.

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