Jordan Staal and Petr Sykora tally two points in Pittsburgh Penguins' preseason opener

Sykora popped two goals on the powerplay

Preseason for the NHL also means preseason for the bloggers.  Time to dust those cobwebs off and get back to game recaps.

All that talk surrounding Jordan Staal.  All that "he's going back to the wing, how will he handle it" skepticism may have received an answer tonight.

Maybe he shut them up with a promising 1-goal, 1-assist preseason performance.  Maybe it means nothing.  But it looked good, so we'll take it, right?

Staal shot out of the gate early for the Pittsburgh Penguins, scoring 51 seconds into the first period to put the Pens ahead to an early 1-0 lead.  In the second period, Staal laced a pass to Satan, who dished to Sykora for an easy power-play goal. 

The power play clicked again in the third on yet another Sykora goal, this time the helpers coming from both highly touted prospect Alex Goligoski and Janne Pesonen.  Even captain Sid got in on the action with a short-handed goal in the third.

Tampa scored late in the third to tie it, sending the game to an unnecessary overtime and subsequent shootout.  Had it been a regular season game, you'd mark this as a lost point.  But since it doesn't matter, you just hope there won't be many of these this season.

Other highlights of the night - Godard didn't waste time in vying for the spot once secured by former heavyweights Jarkko Ruutu and Georges Laraque.  With just a little under 10 minutes remaining in the first period, the mitts dropped against Tampa's David Koci.  Prospect Ryan also tossed a few haymakers against the Lightning's Zenon Konopka, while Kris Beech someone managed to rack up 17 minutes of penalties and a game misconduct for boarding. 

The surprising - Marc-Andre Fleury played the entire game between the pipes, stopping 26 of 30 shots faced before dropping the game in a shootout.  Since I didn't see the entire game it's hard to say how MAF looked throughout.

The upsetting - Sergei Gonchar left the game with an injury, thought to have come from a check via Tampa's David Koci.   No news yet on the seriousness of it all.

Numbers - Pens 2-for-8 on the PP, 5-for-5 on the penalty kill.  Not bad.

If you watched/went to the game, jump on in with your take.