Jackets Blog: Jackets Cannon
Sidney Crosby fell one goal short of notching his third hat trick of the week as the Pens smoked the Columbus Blue Jackets by the final of 7-2 for the team's ninth-straight win.
As OlenWhitaker said in the game thread, you can't say enough good things about this game. Paul Martin and Sid each earned two goals. Deryk Engelland and Mike Rupp each scored one for the first time in forever and Tyler Kennedy picked up his own rebound for his fifth of the year. Eric Godard also came "this" close to getting his first of the season, if not for Rupp coming in out of nowhere to push the loose puck into the net. No guarantees at that point and you can't blame Rupp for making sure the puck found the twine, but bad break for Godard.
Speaking of, Godard finished with a grand total of 10:21 seconds of ice time, 38 seconds more than the goal-stealing Rupp (joking). He may need to be a healthy scratch in the next game just so he can catch his breath.
Marc-Andre Fleury wasn't worked all that hard, but when he was he seemed to be up to the task. I'd venture to say that Chris Clark's third period power-play goal was a bit soft, but who am I to judge in a 7-2 win? The only bad thing to come from this game is the penalty kill, a unit that gave up its first goal in like, 4,000 games. Fact is it was more like 40 chances, but that's the sort of streak you'd sort of expect to see broken in a blow-out game like this when Dan Bylsma isn't focused on sending his big guns out to kill off the penalties. Last I checked Kris Letang and Chris Kunitz weren't the best of PK guys in the league.
Next game in Monday night at 7:00 against the Devils. (PS - Ilya Kovalchuk scored his first goal in nine games tonight in a 5-3 loss to the Flyers.)