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Penguins vs. Flyers recap: Pittsburgh dominates Philly in 4-1 win

The PIttsburgh Penguins win big over the Philadelphia Flyers in a very satisfying and dominating team effort. Come look at the highlights and chime in with your thoughts.

By Hooks Orpik
Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

After winning 8 of their last 10 games, the Flyers felt pretty good about coming into this game. Then they ran into a brick wall.

The Highlights

The Flyers strike first, early in the 2nd period with Radko Gudas taking a fairly innocent looking shot from the point that deflects off Kris Letang and goes in.

The Pens answer very quickly 1:01 later, very nice pass from Nick Bonino to find Trevor Daley who absolutely rifles a shot that literally gets lodged in the roof of the net behind Steve Mason.

Pittsburgh's pressure continues. Phil Kessel doesn't have a point (at press time) but his strong play gets the puck to Bonino who makes another nice pass, this time to Carl Hagelin. Boss Carl fires it by Mason. Just a hell of a shot.

The Pens stretch the lead out to 3-1 later in the second period with Steve Mason having a Steve Mason moment and kicking a puck into his own net from a Chris Kunitz shot that went wide, but eventually in.

About the best tweet you could hope to see from a Philly media member, just total domination by the Pens through 40 minutes.

Kris Letang scores the empty netter to finish what we all knew, this game was ending up as a big win.

Some Thoughts

  • The Philly PP has torched the Pens, so of course what do the Penguins do in the first 5 minutes? See Brian Dumoulin take only his 6th minor penalty of the season.
  • It wasn't Dumoulin's game early, after his partner Trevor Daley hung him out to dry with an ill-advised pinch, Dumo allowed not 1, but 2 passes on the ensuing odd man rush, resulting in an open net chance for Brayden Schenn. Luckily, Schenn would miss.
  • Olli Maatta, on the other hand, expertly defended Sam Gagner on a 2-on-1 later in the first period denying the attempted centering pass.
  • Phil Kessel, of all people, made 2 nice defensive plays in the first period, first denying Claude Giroux a scoring chance with a well-placed slash, then not letting the puck get by him on a rush, showing some surprising gap-control and stick-work. Kessel made a couple more good plays away from the puck too, including the 2nd Pens goal as mentioned above. He even separated a man from the puck on the forecheck. Very inspired game for old #81.
  • And Bonino with 2 assists strings along another solid game. Obviously with Malkin out, the Pens need a lot more out of Bonino and he's come through these past couple games.
  • Nice short-handed breakaway by Carl Hagelin late in the first. Shame he couldn't finish but nice to see it earned, and he had to deal with a rolling puck on bad ice. It's been a while since the Pens have had such a pure speedster option on the PK.
  • Sidney Crosby up to an 11 game scoring streak with an assist on Kunitz's goal. And, as we pointed out yesterday, the Pens improve their record to 15-8-3 with Crosby in the lineup for games in Philly.
  • Bryan Rust gets a long 3 zone breakaway when Mark Streit falls. Mason manages to stop it, but another seemingly daily recap of the chances Rust can make with his speed.
  • Penguins improve to 32-0-0 when leading after two periods.
  • Not a great night for Justin Schultz on the power play, and they're not using him much at even strength. With Ben Lovejoy about to be ready for game-action again, how much more leash does Schultz have?
  • The Pens power play was one of the full dull spots today, going 0/3 and not really getting anything going. Luckily, the Flyers PP (which usually kills the Pens) was 0/3 with some great play by all the Pens PK'ers.
  • Luckily, Fleury had such an easy and quiet game, he should be good to go to play tomorrow.

A win is worth 2 points, but this one feels like more. The Penguins playoff path looks really good now with 5 straight games, Crosby rolling and the rest of the team chipping in the sky looks like the limit.

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