By Dave Molinari, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/?m=1
Matt Freed/Post-Gazette
Penguins goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury watches as the Canadiens' third goal goes in the net in the second period of Wednesday's game at Mellon Arena.
It is the kind of defeat the Penguins had not suffered in nearly two years.
The kind that leaves emotions raw and exposed.
Eyes, moist and red.
Dreams, dead and buried.
The kind that ends a season.
Montreal beat them, 5-2, in Game 7 of the second round Wednesday night at Mellon Arena, snuffing the Penguins' chances of winning a second consecutive Stanley Cup before their run at another title had built momentum.
The game also was the Penguins' final one at Mellon Arena, where their inaugural game was a 2-1 loss to the Canadiens Oct. 11, 1967.
The victory was the second in a row in a seventh game on the road this spring for the Canadiens, who upset Washington in Round 1 and will face the survivor of the Boston-Philadelphia series in the Eastern Conference final.
Montreal was the lower seed in this series, but not the lesser team. The Canadiens had an edge in most facets of play and earned their spot in Round 3 with impressive efficiency and execution.
"It just came down to execution and came down to one game," Penguins center Sidney Crosby said. "That's basically it. They played better."
And excellent goaltending. Jaroslav Halak turned aside 37 of 39 shots in Game 7; his Penguins counterpart, Marc-Andre Fleury, was pulled early in the second period after allowing four goals on 13 shots.
"We didn't have a great start," center Jordan Staal said. "And we kind of hung [Fleury] out to dry."
Crosby controlled the faceoff that started the game. Usually, that is not worth noting, but that proved to be about as good as it got for the Penguins.
They were assessed two penalties in the first 32 seconds of play, and Montreal used the first of those power plays -- the result of a boarding call against Crosby -- to go in front to stay. Brian Gionta got the goal at 32 seconds, deflecting a P.K. Subban centering pass behind Fleury from the left side of the net.
"As a coach, you plan for different scenarios," Dan Bylsma of the Penguins said. "You can safely say this is one I didn't plan for."
A bad situation for the Penguins got worse at 14:23, when they were unable to clear the puck from their zone, which led to Dominic Moore scoring on a turning shot from the right side of the slot to make it 2-0. Things deteriorated further when Andrei Kostitsyn broke up a Chris Kunitz pass in the Penguins' end, triggering a sequence that ended with Mike Cammalleri driving a shot past Fleury from inside the right circle for his seventh goal of the series and 12th of the playoffs.
The Penguins had a chance to regain their equilibrium when Kostitsyn was sent off for roughing at 3:59, but instead, took self-destruction to a new depth.
Penalty-killer Travis Moen carried the puck down the left side and, as he neared defenseman Sergei Gonchar, bounced the puck off the boards. He then skated around Gonchar, who made no apparent effort to stop him, and collected the puck before throwing it past Fleury at 5:14 to put Montreal up by four.
At that point, Bylsma replaced Fleury with Brent Johnson.
"I was mad that I didn't make those saves to keep the team in the game," Fleury said.
Kunitz finally gave the 17,132 fans reason to do something other than grieve at 8:36, when he ended up with the puck after a fortuitous bounce off an official and beat Halak from the left side of the crease.
Staal upped the crowd volume by deflecting in an Alexei Ponikarovsky shot at 16:30, but the Penguins could not capitalize on a power play at the start of the third or another a few minutes later when they might have made a real game of it.
"As bad as we started, we really did dig in in the second half of the game and empty the tank," Crosby said. "It was too little, too late."
Gionta delivered the coup de grace on a power play in the middle of the third, swatting a Cammalleri pass out of the air and by Johnson to give Montreal its margin of victory.
And to send the Penguins' playoff beards and their season down the drain.
For more on the Penguins, read the Pens Plus blog with Dave Molinari and Shelly Anderson at www.post-gazette.com/plus. Dave Molinari: dmolinari@post-gazette.com.
Penguins Plus, a blog by Dave Molinari and Shelly Anderson, is featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
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