By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/?m=1
Maybe they hadn't noticed, these Canadiens, even though it had been mentioned fairly prominently in only about 98 percent of the continental media's coverage of the Eastern Conference semifinal that came to a tipping point.
Maybe they were too close to the trees to see the forest, too close to the ice to see the berg, too close to the jungle to see the Tarzanian challenge of shutting down Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in this series to realize that the very process was successfully under way.
PITTSBURGH - MAY 8: Sergei Gonchar(notes) #55 of the Pittsburgh Penguins celebrates his goal with teammates against the Montreal Canadiens in Game Five of the Eastern Conference Semifinals during the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs at Mellon Arena on May 8, 2010 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)In hockey's standard five-against-five arrangement, even strength as it's politely called, Penguins superstars Crosby and Malkin had not scored a single point between them through four games of a deadlocked series.
So why on Rocket Richard's earth, begins the fateful question, would Montreal risk some other arrangement? Why would defenseman Josh Gorges, whose clinician's defense in this postseason had drawn such robust praise throughout the sport, spasm into a mindless defensive-zone penalty as a scoreless first period drew to a close in Game 5?
"It was unfortunate," Canadiens coach Jacques Martin said in full diplomatic spin in the moments after the Penguins got a 2-1 victory Saturday night at Mellon Arena and a chance to end the series Monday night in Montreal. "But it wound up the penalties were three apiece, so it's a situation where we've just got to execute better on our special teams."
Execute?
Be careful with that term.
Gorges was positioned behind the Penguins' Bill Guerin with less than three minutes remaining before the first intermission, both their backs to the goal post, when Guerin suddenly felt the telltale sensation of a simultaneous thump across both shoulder blades.
Gorges went to the penalty box for cross-checking at 17:15, and the Penguins' power-play unit floated onto the pond tugging a boatload of confidence.
Sixty-three seconds later, Kris Letang one-timed a whistling slap shot past the virtually impenetrable Jaroslav Halak, and the course of things was at least dramatically reset, perhaps definitively reset.
"We're going to go into their building," Letang cautioned. "It's going to be hard."
Especially if the production from Malkin and Crosby remains tepid.
Malkin got an assist on the Penguins' first goal, only his second of the series, Sergei Gonchar got the other, and, even though Crosby remained shotless, the power play clicked for the seventh time in 16 chances against Montreal, making the Penguins 14 for 44 with a man-advantage this postseason. That 32 percent conversion rate is the best of the still-active playoff teams, and renders as mere lunacy all the bellyaching about the Penguins' power play that marked the long hockey winter.
The Penguins brought excellent early pressure to the Halak predicament, forcing him to make five stops in the game's first 4:27, but that only added to the relative criminality of Gorges' pointless cross-check. When he did it, the Canadiens had control defensively. The Penguins had only four shots in the period's final 15:33.
"They had traffic in front of me all the time," Halak said after getting outplayed by Marc-Andre Fleury for the second time in the past three games, although he didn't see it that way necessarily. "We made it easy on their goalie; that's the way I saw it. We have to get more traffic."
Fleury stopped 32 shots and got within 31 seconds of his second playoff shutout this week before Michael Cammalleri poked one between his knees. Fleury appears up to the task of getting the Penguins into the conference final, but it would look a lot easier if Crosby started putting pucks in the net again.
Penguins coach Dan Bylsma, who tied Scotty Bowman Saturday night with his 32nd postseason win behind a Penguins bench, had attempted all manner of innovation to get Malkin and Crosby on the score sheet, including twinning them on the same line repeatedly. One sequence seemed to indicate that wrinkle would yield nothing so much as frustration. On the same shift, defensemen Alex Goligoski and Jordan Leopold both misread Crosby's drop-pass, resulting in a two-on-one Montreal break the other way, then Malkin skated the puck around Halak menacingly, but Crosby whiffed on Geno's perfect centering pass.
But the larger predicaments are still affixed to the Canadiens. Former Penguins defenseman Hal Gill, who showed up for the postseason dressed as Mean Joe Greene and with all of the defensive aptitude, left the game prior to the third period and didn't return to Montreal's already depleted defensive corps.
"A lower-body injury," Martin said, enunciating half of hockey's great diagnostic dichotomy. "He'll be re-evaluated."
Halak is fairly positive the Canadiens won't blink.
"We're still alive and very much in this thing," he said. "We've been in this situation before. We just go home, relax; it'll be exciting."
Especially if they make the Penguins play five-on-five.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com. More articles by this author
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