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The Confluence

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Penguins open Cup defense with 3-2 win over Rangers

by Tony on 10/02/09 at 11:25 PM ET
Comments (5)

The banner was raised, then it was time to start it all over again.

The Penguins capped off a tremendous night of Stanley Cup championship celebrations with a scrappy 3-2 win over the New York Rangers tonight at the Igloo.

Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby and Tyler Kennedy scored for the Pens, whiile Chris Drury and new Ranger Marian Gaborik scored for the Rangers.

It wasn’t the smoothest of games by any stretch of the imagination, as there weren’t many long stretches of open play without turnovers.

The Penguins rode the emotion of the Cup ceremony through the first half of the opening period, dominating the Rangers in just about every facet of the game.  That resulted in the first goal of the game and season for the Penguins on the powerplay.  Chris Kunitz attempted to center a pass towards Crosby heading to the goal but was deflected.  Alex Goligoski was there to corral the rebound and softly feed the puck to Sergei Gonchar, who blasted a slapper from the right point.  Malkin was right in front of Ranger goalie Henrik Lundqvist to deflect the puck past him and give the Penguins a 1-0 lead at the 7:48 mark.

But give the Rangers credit, that was the only blemish they gave up in that initial onslaught, and they played the Penguins even for most of the remainder of the night.  They also took full advantage of a fortunate bounce to even the game at one goal apiece late in the first period.  A Penguins clearing attempt hit one of the officials along the boards, where new Ranger Christopher Higgins gathered the loose puck for a quick centering pass to Drury, who deflected it past Marc-Andre Fleury to make it 1-1 at 16:01.

The Penguins regained the lead in the second period off a broken 3-on-1 break.  Bill Guerin received a backhanded pass from Kunitz but was unable to put it on net on his backhand.  However, Kris Letang was there behind the net to make a quick centering pass to Crosby in the crease for a tap-in goal to give the Pens a 2-1 lead.

Only 66 seconds later, Alex Goligoski fired a simple wrister from the right point that Tyler Kennedy barely deflected and got it past Lundqvist again to make it 3-1 Penguins.

The Rangers weren’t finished, though.  At 5:56 of the third period, Brandon Dubinsky made a centering pass from the left boards that Fleury stopped, but left a big rebound that Gaborik wristed past him to cut the Pens’ lead to 3-2.

Other notes:
- If he stays healthy, Gaborik will be a big addition to the Rangers.  Of course, that’s a BIG if.
- I counted four no-look passes that resulted in turnovers.  Maybe it was playing at home, maybe it was the celebration night, but the Pens passed up quite a few shots getting a little too cute.
- Outside of the ceremony, it seemed to me that the crowd was relatively subdued.  Just me ??
- One of the things I’m watching for is whether Ruslan Fedotenko starts connecting on feeds from Malkin.  Well, count Ruslan as being 0-for-2.  He had two nice feeds from Geno, but couldn’t connect on either.
- The opening ceremony was fantastic.  Nice to see the huge reception for Max Talbot, besides the expected ones for Sid, Geno and MAF.
- Speaking of the ceremony, if you read this article this morning, you saw where Rangers coach John Tortorella said he was going to have the Rangers on the bench during the ceremony out of respect for the Cup.  Well, I Tweeted this morning that I gave Torts props for that.  I was then contacted by a Pens official asking where I heard that, because the Pens did NOT have the Rangers in the plans for the ceremony.  Obviously, the Pens advised the Rangers during the day.  So the reason why you didn’t see the Rangers was due to the Penguins’ plans.
- The Pens’ powerplay looked a little better, a little more movement than we’ve been accustomed to see.  Curious why they had the lefty Goligoski on the left point of the #1 unit, though.
- Pens’ penalty kill picked up where they left off last season, killing all four Pens’ penalties.
- After the Pens won most of the faceoffs early, the teams finished even at 50%-50%.
- Kunitz led the Pens with 6 hits.
- Letang and Mark Eaton both led the Pens with 4 blocked shots.

The Pens have no time to rest on their opening night laurels.  They’ll fly tonight to New York and face the Islanders on Saturday night.

Filed in: | The Confluence | Permalink
 Tags: New+York+Rangers, NHL-Hockey, Pittsburgh+Penguins,

Comments

Nice job… It was a good game for the Pens, but hardly a great game. I thought Fleury was our best player, and the same could be said for Lundqvist on the other side. The play of the game for me was the big save by MAF on that 2 on 1.

I wanna see more from Sid. I thought he was OK. Guerin made a couple decent plays but he had at least a couple turnovers on the power play that just can’t happen.

All in all though I thought it was a good game to open up the season. However they better get in sync over the next couple of games - the Flyers on Thursday are gonna be gunning for us and then some.

Posted by LGP8771 on 10/02/09 at 11:56 PM ET

the Flyers on Thursday are gonna be gunning for us and then some

Mark my word, Cindy will be scratched for every game this year against Pronger’s new team. Some undisclosed ailment.

Posted by Red Winger from Sault Ste. Marie on 10/03/09 at 07:44 AM ET

Haha, this coming from a guy whos team was just beaten by a guy with two replaced hips, and a few teenagers!  Is that why there are no blogs posted on the Wings?  They only show up if they win?  Maybe Joanne Franzen and Nicole Lidstrom should focus on hockey and not Sweden…

Posted by Greg on 10/03/09 at 07:49 AM ET

Great Job Pens!
Now put it behind you and start the season anew.

Posted by Lindas1st from New England on 10/03/09 at 10:38 AM ET

Hey Red Winger - why don’t you go troll somewhere else, like A2Y? Go cry about the refs or Bettman like other Wings fans. Sore losers.

I love the obsession with Crosby. After all he’s done. Teams have been gunning for him for 4 years straight and what has he done?

- Youngest captain ever to win the Stanley Cup
- Seven playoff series wins in his 2 years as captain (suck it)
- Youngest player ever to win MVP
- Youngest player ever to win the Art Ross
- Youngest player ever to get 100 points in a season
- 398 points in 291 games, and 63 points in 49 playoff games. Those numbers speak for themselves. When you add the other stuff, it is downright amazing.

Pronger is gonna spend a lot of time in the penalty box. The Flyers will challenge the Pens for sure, but even with Pronger, the Pens’ offense is way strong. They don’t have two shutdown defensemen - they have one. Malkin is a beast. And our PP is gonna improve this season. Our whole team is. The Pens are still one of the youngest teams in the league. The Flyers have merely set themselves up closer to our level, but whether they’re actually ahead of us remains to be seen, and that’s quite unlikely.

Posted by LGP8771 on 10/03/09 at 04:13 PM ET

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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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