Penguins shut out Carolina

Fleury stops 31 shots, Crosby scores two goals in 3-0 victory

Wednesday, January 03, 2007
By Dave Molinari, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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Marc-Andre Fleury never really made a signature save last night, one of those stops that guarantees a guy five or 10 seconds of quality exposure on the national highlights shows.

There even were a few times when Fleury glanced behind him, half-afraid of what he might see in his net.

But, even when he didn't realize it, Fleury managed to stop everything Carolina launched at him during the Penguins' 3-0 victory at Mellon Arena, as he made 31 saves while his teammates put together 60 of the most solid minutes of hockey they've turned in this season.

"It's one of the best games we've played," center Sidney Crosby said. "It was complete. We didn't have any lapses."

Fleury's shutout was his second of the season and fourth in the NHL. And possibly one of his most impressive, because good positioning all but eliminated the need for him to make any spectacular stops.

"He was solid," Crosby said. "The [defensemen] were doing a good job of clearing the rebounds, but he was making some big saves."

Fleury didn't have much choice, because Carolina goalie Cam Ward was playing at a rarefied level himself. He finished with 34 saves, and single-handedly kept the Penguins from putting the game out of reach early.

"Their goalie was phenomenal to keep his team in the game," Penguins coach Michel Therrien said.

But he couldn't win it alone, and the Penguins had a pronounced edge in almost every facet of play. They also had the decidedly unfair advantage of having Crosby in their lineup, as he scored two goals and set up a third for another marvelously routine three-point night.

"I was saying on the bench, it seems like two [points per game], you're expecting," defenseman Ryan Whitney said. "Anything after that is ... it's ridiculous."

Which, coincidentally enough, seems to be the way Hurricanes coach Peter Laviolette was inclined to describe his team's performance.

"We played the game like the points didn't matter," Laviolette said. "The effort was lousy."
The victory was the Penguins' second in a row and raised their record to 17-15-6. It also ended a run of three consecutive home-ice losses to the Hurricanes.

The Penguins ran up an early 7-1 advantage in shots and got the only goal of the first period at 5:36, when Crosby beat Ward on the far side with a shot from below the right dot.

Michel Ouellet had a chance to pad the Penguins' lead when Erik Christensen set him up alone in front of Ward at 7:15 of the second, but failed to convert. Ward, though, might have saved his best stop for later in the period, as he denied Evgeni Malkin from point-blank range on a Brooks Orpik rebound with 24 seconds to go before the intermission.

"He did great," Fleury said. "He kept the game tight for a long time."

The Penguins finally got a second puck behind Ward during a power play 23 seconds into the third, when Whitney went to the net from the left point and deflected in a pass Mark Recchi gave him from near the top of the right circle.

The catch was, Whitney did it with his left skate, not his stick blade, so the play was subjected to a video review that determined Whitney had not deliberately kicked the puck.

"Like Pele," Whitney said. "It just kind of hit my skate. Luckily, I didn't have a kicking motion or anything."

Ryan Malone had a chance to add to the Penguins' advantage when he got a short-handed breakaway at 10:40, but he opted to try to beat Ward with a slap shot and ended up hammering the puck wide of the net.

That reprieve was short-lived for the Hurricanes, though, because Crosby put the game out of reach with his second of the evening at 11:19.

He rushed the puck up the right side then, as he was closing in on the net, tried to fire a cross-ice pass. The puck caromed back to Crosby, however, and he tossed it past Ward to make it 3-0.

Twenty-three seconds later, the Hurricanes got their final opportunity with the extra man, but were thwarted as effectively as their had been on the previous five chances.

"Our penalty-kill made some huge kills, Marc was solid, the [defensemen] were solid and we got a big power-play goal when we needed it," Crosby said. "I think it's fair to say it was one of our more complete games."

(Dave Molinari can be reached at DWMolinari@Yahoo.com. )