Pens douse the Flames 2-0

The Flames, winning a big game at home on Monday against the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings flew across the continent for their only meeting against the Penguins.  And the Pens, resting since Sunday's matinee against the Flyers came out strong and confident and did the job.  Kris Letang scored on the power-play for game's first goal, Pittsburgh's penalty kill went a perfect 5 for 5 and Hal Gill of all players scored a beauty on the rush.  Business was taken care of tonight.

• The Penguins even attack carried on.  All players except defensive minded Mark Eaton and Eric Godard (whopping 3:46 of ice-time) registered a shot on the goal.  As mentioned, even Gill jumped in on the rush and made no mistakes when Evgeni Malkin dropped a beaut of a cross-body back pass to him.
• Black and blue trophy leader Brooks Orpik racked up 10 hits and 7 blocked shots in another stellar effort.
• Solid night in the faceoff circle for the Pens too; Sidney Crosby won 11 of his 17 draws, Max Talbot won 6 of 7 and Jordan Staal was over 50% too winning 10 of 19.
• In addition to the faceoffs and nifty pass to Letang, Crosby had another usual solid all-around game.  Crosby's moving his feet well and making things happen out there again.
• Malkin would have had the play of the night--if not maybe the year--when he rushed the puck from even with his own goal all the way down the ice past and through several Flames....But when pulling the puck (and himself) by Jimmy Vandermeer, Geno's stick got up and accidentally tomahawked Vandermeer, earning a double-minor for the blood.
• Marc-Andre Fleury got the well deserved star of the game with 31 saves and standing tall on the penalty kills.  Fleury even took a shot at the empty net at the end of the game, which leads us to...
• Empty net madness.  The Flames pulled Miikka Kupusoff with 1:33, which lead to a comedy of errors.  Sergei Gonchar may have had a shot but he threw it around the net, Malkin set up Matt Cooke but he missed.  After the Flames re-grouped Crosby got the puck back and gave a sure thing to Cooke....who shot wide.  A win is a win but it was humorous to see them miss empty net so many times.

A good win for the Pens, and one the needed to have to keep pace with the teams in their pack.  Philadelphia has won three straight, the Hurricanes all of a sudden have won five straight games, including tonight and the Rangers have now won 7 of their past 10.