One more Saturday night

The Penguins played one of the grittier, chippier games in recent regular season memory as they with stood Alex Ovechkin and the Capitals, winning 2-1 in D.C.  Bryan Pothier of Washington gave the Caps an early 1-0 lead. Pittsburgh responded with second period goals from Jordan Staal and Ryan Whitney. Stall scored his first goal of the season from Orpik and Recchi , and Ryan Whitney scored the game winner off assists from Crosby and Malone.

This was the second win in back to back nights for the Pens who beat the Carolina Hurricanes in a shoot out 4-3 on Friday.  Sidney Crosby scored the game winner in the shootout and Petr Sykora scored two dirty goals from in front of the net during regulation, to lead the Pens past Carolina.  I saw the end of the third and the shootout, for more on the Carolina game check out Rich’s blog.

The back to back games gave Therrien a chance to sit goalie Marc-Andre Fleury on Friday, and play backup Danny Sabourin, who made the game clinching save in the shootout. Fleury has not been dominant in the early going, I thought Therrien might even play Sabourin again in Washington, but I suppose Fleury got the message.  I imagine there’s a fine line between motivating a struggling starting goalie and killing his confidence. Especially with a young guy like Fleury when the season is only 7 games old. 

Fleury’s play in Washington was encouraging, he made 30 saves on 31 shots. He made a few spectacular saves, but for the most part was in good position and let the puck hit him.   The best save he made was off a shot he didn’t even see, when Ovechkin took a shot from the slot which hit the shaft of Fleury’s stick.  Great positioning indeed.

I love the Roberts-Talbot-Armstrong line. Talbot is a goal scoring machine in the early going. Half of Robert’s hits are borderline illegal, and the other half are dirty.  His veteran savvy is evident the way he avoids getting called for a penalty on every shift while still playing an extremely physical game.  Also, I think the refs are scared of him.  Armstrong is like Gary Roberts Jr.

Jordan Staal scored his first goal of the season against Washington.  Before the game started I said to my buddy Rich, “Staal needs to get a cheap one to get the ball rolling.” Staal knocked in a rebound and was promptly cheap shotted. Later in the game Staal got in his first NHL fight with Matt Pettinger-they fought to a draw I can’t wait till the next Pens Caps game.

 It’s too bad they only play four times this season. The unbalanced schedule is crap.

The Caps game featured a great showdown between George Laraque and Donald Brashear, Pens announcer Bob Errey said they looked like twins as they got set to spar, as they are both left handed and use the same lethal combination of the Randy Savage and Casius Clay fighting styles. It was like half way through the third they talked it over, “Hey it’s a chippy game here, we should probably fight, it’s kind of thing eh?, You wanna go?” Then right after the face-off they dropped the gloves. Laraque appeared to have gotten the best of Brashear, but then Brashear rope-a-doped him and landed a fierce left before going in for the take down.

Pittsburgh vs. Washington looks like it’s becoming a rivalry again, and not just because of Sid and Alex.  This was a tough win against a tough team.