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Clash of the former contenders |
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Coming off a 5-4 victory over the Vancouver Canucks the Pittsburgh Penguins will be taking on the other participant in the 2011 Stanley Cup Final, the Boston Bruins. The Bruins are similar to the Penguins in the sense their competitive window is pretty much over (even if the Penguins look/are worse). While the Bruins surprised me last year in their first post Bergeron/Krejci season this year isn’t going as well. This was evident when they fired their head coach Jim Montgomery in a surprise move. Technically, Boston is in a playoff spot at the moment with the caveat being they’ve played 24 games while some of the other teams are still at 21 games played. Things are at the point when you even have some whispers of a Marchand trade per Chris Johnston.
"This is not a player we expected to find on the Big Board, even if he’s currently playing out the final year on his contract. But as a league source noted this week, "I don't think anyone in Boston thought this is where they'd be at." If the decision to replace Jim Montgomery with Joe Sacco behind the Bruins bench doesn’t produce the desired results, some difficult personnel decisions will almost certainly follow."
Penguins captain Sidney Crosby continues to be one of the best teammates going. Once again he played host for Thanksgiving for teammates who need a place to celebrate
Haven’t seen any updates about a morning skate so for now I’m operating on the assumption they are going to run back the lineup which led to a victory over the Vancouver Canucks.
I would like to see Owen Pickering in Grzcelyk’s spot if he is healthy, but given it is a game against the Bruins I have to imagine Mike Sullivan will have him out there against his former team.
I’d like to see Puljujarvi in the lineup on a regular basis. I certainly don’t need to see Matt Nieto in there over him.
While I would put Malkin back with Crosby I appreciate giving Sid two competent wingers so he can at least get some point (he had two on Wednesday). It is also nice for Tomasino to get a look in the top six right away. However, things didn’t go great on Wednesday. The Bunting-Malkin-Tomasino line was absolutely caved in. They had a CF 4 CA 18 night for a CF% of 18.18 and an xGF% of 13.98. This might be a short term experiment if things don’t look better this evening.
Penguins will be looking to make it back to back wins for the first time since late October and early November.
Thanks for reading!
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
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