Crosby, Penguins shootout winners

Sidney Crosby celebrates his winning shootout goal with teammate Ryan Malone last night in Ottawa.

Sidney Crosby gets another winning goal as Penguins rally for three goals in last 11 minutes of regulation to stun Ottawa

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

By Dave Molinari

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

OTTAWA -- They read the newspapers and watch the highlights shows so, yeah, the Penguins knew all about the problems Ottawa has had in the third period lately.

They just never expected to be able to add to them.

Not when they were trailing by three goals with less than 11 minutes left in regulation and hadn't been able to do much well with any sort of regularity -- except maybe to take penalties.

But the Penguins ran off three unanswered goals in a span of two minutes, 48 seconds midway through the third to transform a 4-1 deficit into what became a 5-4 shootout victory at Scotiabank Place.

The victory snapped a seven-game losing streak against Ottawa and raised the Penguins' record to 36-21-9. They trail the fourth-place Senators by one point in the Eastern Conference.

Sidney Crosby, who was shut out during regulation and overtime for the for the fourth time in the past five games -- that matches the worst dry spell of his pro career, set Nov. 27-Dec. 8, 2005 -- got the shootout-deciding goal when he beat Ottawa goalie Ray Emery with a backhander.

Erik Christensen also scored for the Penguins, while Evgeni Malkin was stopped by Emery. Penguins goalie Jocelyn Thibault stopped Dany Heatley and Antoine Vermette during the shootout, but was beaten by Dean McAmmond.

Nonetheless, his two shootout stops gave Crosby the chance to lock up the victory, which he did.

"We're getting that big play, that big save, whatever it is," Crosby said. "We're finding a way, and that's important."



Sidney Crosby checks the Senators' Chris Kelly into the corner in the first period last night at Scotiabank Place in Ottawa.


The game began well enough for the Penguins, as Colby Armstrong put them on top at 5:56 with a backhander from along the goal line to the right of Emery.

Mike Fisher countered for Ottawa with a power-play goal at 9:27, when he beat goalie Marc-Andre Fleury from in front, and Christoph Schubert put the Senators in front, 2-1, at 11:22.

The Penguins had a 39-second power play late in the period. That wasn't enough time for them to manufacture a goal, but it was enough for them to allow one as Chris Kelly put a 50-foot shot off Fleury's pads and into the net at 18:38.

Kelly's goal was marshmallow-soft -- not exactly what Ottawa coach Bryan Murray had in mind a few hours earlier when he said, "Fleury has obviously become the type of goaltender everyone thought he was going to be" -- and convinced coach Michel Therrien to replace Fleury with Thibault for the start of the second.

The switch didn't trouble the Senators much, though, because Heatley made it 4-1 with a power-play goal at 4:32 of the second. That was one of eight chances Ottawa had with the extra man during the first 40 minutes.

"At this time of the year, we can't be coming out with efforts like that," Armstrong said. "We knew it was a big game, so there were no excuses."

In the end, though, they wouldn't need any.

The Senators had failed to protect third-period leads in each of the previous two games and no doubt had a flashback or two when Jordan Staal got his seventh short-handed goal of the season at 9:22 after stealing the puck in the neutral zone.

"That really set the tone," Crosby said. "Led the way for what was to come."

The entire Ottawa bench no doubt winced at 11:02, after Christensen stole the puck from Mike Comrie and set up Gary Roberts near the left hash for his second in two games.

But the Senators' nightmare did not truly recur until 12:10, when Staal set up Ryan Malone, who tossed a shot behind Emery from below the left dot to guarantee the Penguins a point that was absolutely unthinkable just a few minutes earlier.

"We came together there in the third, really focused on just playing the way we could and seeing where that brought us," Crosby said. "We have to be happy with that, but we don't want to dig ourselves those kinds of holes."

Whatever offensive problems Crosby has had -- "I've created a few plays, and they're just not going in," he said. "I'm going to break out here soon" -- his touch in shootouts is platinum-plated lately.

So, when the game was on his stick at the end of the shootout, there wasn't much uncertainty about the ending. Or about how fortunate the Penguins were to get to that point.

"We can't leave it to chance like that, especially right now," Armstrong said. "We got lucky."


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