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The Confluence

Wings down Penguins in Game Five blowout, 5-0

by Tony on 06/06/09 at 11:09 PM ET
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Embarrassing, just flat-out embarrassing.

The Wings took full advantage of the return of Pavel Datsyuk, a shaky Marc-Andre Fleury and a Penguins team that completely lost their composure, resulting in a plethora of stupid retaliatory Penguins penalties in a 5-0 whitewash at Joe Louis Arena.

It was the worst Penguins performance in quite a while.  The only thing the Penguins can take consolation is that they now come back home for Game Six in their attempt to extend the series to a seventh game.

Fleury only stopped 16 of the 21 shots on goal before he was yanked in favor of Mathieu Garon.  Garon did his part, stopping all 8 shots he faced.

After a pretty good first ten minutes for the Penguins, the Wings got on the board soon thereafter.  Dan Cleary took a pass from Datsyuk in the Pens’ zone and fired a harmless looking wrister through the legs of Brooks Orpik that screened Fleury a bit to score the goal to make it 1-0 Wings.  The puck might have nicked Orpik’s stick to cause the puck to drop, but not completely sure about that.

It all started to go downhill early in the second period for the Pens.  After the Penguins killed the remainder of a Chris Kunitz goalie interference penalty, the Wings used the long line change to their advantage, as Chris Osgood made a 3/4 ice pass to Marian Hossa, who made a quick pass to Valtteri Filppula, who backhanded a wrister past Fleury to make it 2-0 only 1:44 into the period.

A few minutes later, with Sergei Gonchar in the box for slashing, defenseman Niklas Kronwall made a nice move from behind the net around three Penguins defenders to fire a wrister past Fleury making it 3-0.

That was pretty much your ballgame right there, as the Penguins lost their cool at this point.

Malkin took a bad elbowing penalty soon thereafter, and the Wings made them pay on the powerplay, as Brian Rafalski fired a slapper from the right point that clanged off the left post and into the net for a 4-0 Wings lead.

Later in the period, on a post-whistle scrum, Kunitz takes a foolish roughing penalty, putting the Wings back on the powerplay, where Henrik Zetterberg scored on a one-timer in front of Fleury to make it 5-0, and that was the end of Fleury’s night.

The scoring stopped there, but not the stupid penalties.  Crosby and Max Talbot got caught with slashes, and several others in the third period, which was anti-climatic as they come.

Other notes:
- So much for momentum.
- Let’s hope that Fleury has a short memory span.
- Kunitz and Crosby were both -2.
- The Wings outhit the Pens 42-35. Hossa (?) led the Wings with 8, Orpik led the Pens with 6.

Game Six is Tuesday night back at the Igloo.

Filed in: | The Confluence | Permalink
 Tags: Detroit+Red+Wings, NHL-Hockey, Pittsburgh+Penguins,

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