Pens 10-run Philadelphia on Wednesday, stave off elimination
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Seven Questions For the Masses
Craig Adams and James Neal return for Game 5. Who do you sit?
Who impressed you in Game 4?
Who disappointed you?
Do you put Paul Martin back in the Game 5 lineup if he’s healthy enough to play?
Do you go with six or seven defensemen?
Would you rather have Marc-Andre Fleury, Ilya Bryzgalov or Sergei Bobrovsky in goal?
Can the Penguins win three more in a row?
The First Five Minutes: A look back at setting the tone
Pens start line of Pascal Dupuis-Sidney Crosby-Steve Sullivan with Brooks Orpik and Kris Letang against Scott Hartnell-Claude Giroux-Jaromir Jagr with Matt Carle and Kimmo Timonen.
Crosby wins opening faceoff but puck gets tangled up in Sullivan’s skates. Giroux picks it up and takes it over the Pens’ blue line, passing it over to the left wing and Hartnell rifles a wrister over Marc-Andre Fleury’s glove.
Steve Sullivan is called for high-sticking 17 seconds into the game, providing the Flyers with their first power play. Giroux snaps his head back for emphasis.
Pittsburgh PK unit includes Zbynek Michalek, Orpik, Jordan Staal, and Matt Cooke.
Flyers’ Timonen gets shot off from point, Fleury stops it and Michalek clears it all of the way around the back of his net and out the other side up ice. Giroux has chance to stop the clear but can’t. This was a big play by Michalek as Philly has been able to keep the puck in the Pittsburgh end on power plays with relative ease the first three games.
Flyers carry puck into Pens end again, dumping it behind net. Michalek “coolly” wrists it out of the zone again. “Z’s” status for Wednesday was questionable heading into the contest. His play against the Flyers was anything but questionable.
Jakub Voracek carries puck across left side of Pittsburgh blue line, dumps it and Wayne Simmonds chases down the opposite wing.
Fleury has a chance to stop puck behind his net and reverse it to Letang, but plays puck with one hand and fails to stop it. A relatively easy clear turns into trouble.
Simmonds wins battle along boards with Deryk Engelland, shuffles puck to Jagr who feeds a wide-open Giroux to Fleury’s right.
The Flower overplays a trickler five-hole while sliding across crease and allows game’s first goal 68 seconds into the power play.
The entire sequence is set up by Fleury’s inability to stop the dump-in behind his own goal.
1-0 Philly.
Penguins win scrum on center ice faceoff, Kunitz passes back to Z, who feeds Malkin through the neutral zone. Couturier interferes lightly with Malkin before Malkin gets puck. Offsides on Pittsburgh called. Z confronts Couturier along boards and Max Talbot punches/facewashes Tyler Kennedy from behind.
Malkin-Couturier faceoff outside Philly blue line. Couts slashes Malkin’s stick prior to faceoff, something that may have set Geno off. That’s more than apparent when he jams his stick between Couts’ legs and rightfully earns a two-minute penalty. Just a silly dumb, penalty by Geno. Absolutely no reason for that.
ROOT announcer Bob Erey says that Couturier buys that call but I’m not so sure. That looked painful. Terrible.
Flyers back on second power play less than two minutes into game.
Staal beats Giroux on draw in Pittsburgh end. Z shoots puck up the boards and it finds its way out with a little help from Staal. What a game from Staal and he hasn’t even scored yet.
Simmonds gets puck back in Pens end, let’s puck slide over to Hartnell. Hartnell tries east-west pass to Timonen but Cooke gets stick on puck to slow it down. Timonen sends puck behind net but Orpik picks it off and sends it the length of the ice. By this time Pittsburgh has cleared more pucks on the PK than it did seemingly for all of Game 3 and we’re only 108 seconds into the game.
Timonen carries puck to blue line but Pens’ defense stands him up. Timo wisely moves puck to Giroux but Philly wasn’t expecting three Pittsburgh players at the blue line. Orpik would’ve likely crushed Timo had he attempted to carry the puck further. The Pens’ strategy pays off and Dupuis clears Timo’s pass to Giroux’s area.
Puck brought back into Pittsburgh end again. Z can’t clear but Dupuis pushes centering pass out of the zone.
Quick strike Flyer rush fails and Pens turn it into a 3-on-2. Letang shoots wrister into Bryzgalov’s pads for whistle, then adds a late shove into Matt Carle.
Flyers still have 34 ticks on man advantage.
Break in play leads to organ-accompanied “Crosby s*cks” chant, though the player is not even on the ice.
Pens pressure puck remainder of penalty. Malkin steps out of the box as if on cue as penalty ends. Richard Park puts pass right on Geno’s blade. Jagr is two strides behind Malkin but the Flyers have two d-men back.
Malkin skates right to left, drops puck for Dupuis and heads for the net. Bryzgalov fumbles puck on shot from top of left circle. Geno breaks through two-man pick, kicks pucks with right skate to stick and backhands it into wide open net.
1-1.
Pens bail Malkin out of bad penalty and he pays them back.
Bylsma puts line of Crosby at center with Malkin at right wing and Kunitz at left for faceoff. Simon Despres and Matt Niskanen are on the backline.
Crosby easily beats Couturier on faceoff, gives puck to Niskanen, who moves puck right to left to Despres. The rookie, making his NHL postseason debut, crosses center red and dumps the puck in, hard.
Crosby and Malkin both charge up the right side, Crosby first, then Malkin.
Nicklas Grossmann protects pass from Crosby, who skates past. Malkin then swoops in. He plays both the puck and Grossmann, laying a shoulder check to the Philly defender’s shoulder and chin. Grossmann has his head down and is somewhat extended as he tries to keep the puck away, making for a nasty hit by Malkin. Braydon Coburn and Talbot get the puck out of harm’s way.
Despres shows off his good skating in his own during the next sequence and ends up clearing the puck to center ice.
Malkin then magically steals puck from Grossmann in an amazing display but blindly passes the puck back along the right boards to two waiting Flyers. That was a head scratcher if only because he’s now behind the Flyers net with Philly carrying the puck through the neutral zone.
No harm, though, as Couturier loses the puck to Letang.
Letang passes in his own end to an area for Brian Strait. Strait moves the puck back to Letang but not before Brayden Schenn crunches him into the boards. Nevertheless it was good to see Strait take one for the team.
Joe Vitale can’t take a pass from Letang but the puck bounds back to the Pittsburgh defender after a Philly attempted dump-in. This time Letang nearly gives the puck away to Eric Wellwood before clearing it out of the zone.
Letang breaks up another assault on his side, this time from Simmonds to Schenn.
Eric Tangradi barrels up the right boards in Philly’s end. He protects the puck well, carries it behind the net but has four Flyers between himself and the nearest Penguin. He tries to find Letang, who is sitting high along the blue line but Couturier deflects the pass out of the zone.
Only five minutes have been played but trends are established that will help set the tone for the rest of the night.
-The Pittsburgh defense plays more aggressively than it had for the first three games, challenging rather than backing off. For the first time, the Penguins use seven defensemen. Against a fast-skating team that moves the puck well, the extra d-man really helps.
-Despres skates well and has good vision. Strait didn’t stand out, but that’s probably a good thing for a rookie defenseman.
-Ilya Bryzgalov can’t handle shots too well. Malkin’s goal was only made possible because Bryzgalov failed to hang onto a rebound from a shot at the top of the left circle.
-The Penguins get the puck deep. That’s one of Bylsma’s tenants to his system. When Despres dumped the puck on one side, Crosby and Malkin charged the other side. That will be a recurrent theme in the game.
-Jordan Staal’s strong game starts with strong play in his own zone. The third-line centerman has five goals in the last two games. He’s not a third-line center but that’s an issue for another day. He upped his game after missing shots on quality chances earlier in the series.
-Fortunately for Pittsburgh, Talbot wasn’t the factor he’d been in Game 3.
-Hartnell doesn’t have a goal in the series despite leading Philly with 37 in the regular season. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing for the Pens, however. Sooner or later he’ll probably get one or two.
-The hate for Sidney Crosby in Philadelphia is absurd, but that’s okay. The “we don’t like you either” or the traditional “Crosby s*cks” chants are just part of the package. Crosby, who scored a goal and added two assists, was one of nine Penguins with a multi-point effort. It seems like he’s ready to put the off-ice stuff behind him and just play his best hockey. A scary thought for Flyers fans.
-James Neal getting a game off will likely serve to re-charge his batteries for Friday. He needs to keep his composure, however. He’ll be flying in Game 5.
-Craig Adams will be back, too. He’s one of the few Penguins to have played a pretty solid series from the get-go.
-After letting in a leaky first goal, Fleury made it through the game without looking too bad the rest of the way. By no means is he out of the woods, but at least he can say he kept the Flyers off the scoreboard for the last 44-plus minutes.
-Bylsma is like the Teflon Don. You can say bad things about him, point to numbers that make him look bad, etc. but he does a good job of sticking to his principles.
-Paul Martin didn’t play. There might be more Flyers fans disappointed than Penguins’.
-Zac Rinaldo did play. Pittsburgh fans have to hope that he won’t get suspended for his cheap stuff on Z in Game 4. The Penguins need him to dress and take penalties.
-At some point, JVR will return to the Philadelphia lineup. He’s a good player, though he hasn’t played since March 1.
*****
RINK LINKS
Penguins stay alive with 10-3 win, the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
Suspensions do not alter Flyers’ focus, according to the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Malkin ignites offensive roll, the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
Flyers can’t keep up the pace in playoff loss to Penguins, the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports.
Pens slam host Flyers, according to the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Kovacevic: If Fleury is back, so are Penguins, the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports.
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Tweets
Dave Molinari @MolinariPG
Practice participants appear to be Johnson, Jeffrey, Vitale, Tangradi, 18, Park, Adams, Asham, 48, Despres, Strait, 58, 44, Lovejoy.
Pittsburgh Penguins @pghpenguins
18, 27, 45, 48, 12, 25, 46, 15, 44, 58, 37, 47, 6, 1 present for today's optional skate.
Shelly Anderson @pgshelly
Grossmann not at #Flyers practice. Left Game 4 vs. #Penguins after hits from Malkin and Kennedy.
Dave Molinari @MolinariPG
Rookie D Simon Despres is still in Pgh., and on the ice for practice.
Tim Panaccio @tpanotchCSN
Bobrovsky's GAA is 8.11 and his save percentage is .722; Bryz a little better: 4.95, .844
Dan Rosen @drosennhl
The only guy among the top 9 point scorers in the playoffs so far that is not in the Pens-Flyers series is Andy McDonald.
*****
Treasure Life!
JT
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
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