Penalty Fest 2011: Islanders Drop Wilkes-Barre/Pittsburgh Pens 9-3

Islanders Blog: Lighthouse Hockey

Whenever a fan base is faced with a blowout game like this, the one prevailing thought is, "Just end the game."  Unfortunately, 307 combined penalty minutes [Edit: Final tally is 386] as a result of scrums, fights, slashes, kicks, punches and whatever else you can think of (no biting at least) would not allow that to happen all too quickly.  It was a slow form of torture, and you can bet 29 fan bases are loving every second of it.

What the hell just happened at Nassau Coliseum?

In case you were wondering, a player who doesn't suit up for a game as a result of being injured for almost two months can still suck.  Islanders fans were quick to remind us all that "Crosby sucks," even though he played no part at all in this debacle.

When the Islanders opened up the lead with six straight unanswered goals halfway through the second period, all you had to hope for was for the Pens to cut the deficit.  Or, at the least, leave the game without any more injuries.  Unfortunately, as TonyAndrock reminded me in the comments after this post went live, it appears Eric Tangradi is down and out with some sort of head injury.  When you consider the fact that injuries were a reason why the Pens got blown out on Friday, avoiding any further incidents at this point would be nice. 

I have to admit, I laughed toward the end of the game when the camera cut to the Penguins bench and it showed a grand total of four players.  Same can be said for the Islanders bench. 

The Islanders announcers joked that it would take until Sunday to give a full rundown of the penalties in this game, but here's a brief roundup for your reading pleasure, in order from most to least.  Just a note, these numbers may change, since even as I type this the totals are changing.

If you're keeping score at home, that's somewhere around 307 minutes of penalties (not included on the list is four minutes worth of bench penalties).  I say "somewhere" because even while I type this recap I'm watching the nhl.com event summary updating with new penalty minute totals.  I was at 301 at one point.  Then 304.  Final tally is 307.  If it goes over that, don't look at me.  I tried.  [Edit: yeah, it was still updating.  386 is the final tally]

The record for most combined penalty minutes in a single game came back in 2004 when the Flyers and Senators combined for 419.

Often times I try to take something positive out of a loss.  It's hard to do in a game like this, but I think I can find something.

The positive here?  No one was murdered on the ice.

Oh, and at least New York didn't score 10 goals.  Right?