The Pittsburgh Penguins squeezed out a much needed win against the Ottawa Senators in their Saturday matinee by a score of 3-2.
Sidney Crosby drew the attention of the Ottawa defenders on the wall and then snapped off a backhand pass to a WIDE open Christian Ehrhoff. One of Ehrhoff's best assets is his booming shot. He let that shot boom from 10 feet away from poor Craig Anderson.
That was a huge goal for the Penguins because as I have mentioned before they need to get wins wherever they can while they wait for some healthy bodies to return.
Also helping matters was the St. Louis Blues come from behind victory over the New York Islanders yesterday. The Penguins and Islanders are tied on top of the Metropolitan Division and the Penguins have a game in hand.
Evgeni Malkin did his best Mario Lemieux impression on his breakaway goal.
Speaking of Mario
Quite an amazing look at how great Mario was.
Zach Sill was ejected for his blindside body check to Kyle Turris' chest in the neutral zone. The hit was closer to being dirty than it was clean. It was definitely a penalty but I'm not sure it was a major penalty.
Here's the deal with hits like this. They don't accomplish anything so why make them anymore? If players go into their checks with the sole purpose of acquiring the puck they won't find themselves in these gray areas like Sill did. The puck was gone, let it go. If Bortuzzo followed these same guidelines he wouldn't have lit up Jagr either. The league is shifting away from allowing hits whose sole purpose is to inflict bodily harm so you can either adjust or sometimes be called for a major penalty. Hit to separate the man from the puck, simple concept.
The Penguins didn't miss a beat without Sill in the lineup, no surprise there.
Rob Klinkhammer drew two penalties in the game and the second penalty led to Brandon Sutter's very nice tip-in goal which tied the game. Klinkhammer is an upgrade for the Penguins and will be a useful piece to their puzzle moving forward.
Marc-Andre Fleury made all the necessary saves to give the Penguins a chance to win. The power play goal he had no vision and the Zibanejad goal was a bang bang play in front. He had 27 saves on 29 shots.
The Penguins have today off and then they have a divisional battle with the New York Rangers on Monday. They won't play again until Friday so that should buy a little bit more time for them to get healthy.
Thanks for reading!
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