Sidney Crosby celebrates with teammates after scoring the winning goal in a shootout against the Rangers last night in New York.
Staal, Armstrong score short-handed; Eaton hurt again
Friday, March 02, 2007
By Dave Molinari, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
NEW YORK -- If Penguins coach Michel Therrien had been allowed to script this game, it probably would have played out a bit differently.
He would have left out the parts about spotting the New York Rangers a two-goal lead and needing two short-handed goals in the third period. Likely would have edited out his team's failure to get a five-on-five goal for the fourth game in a row, too.
But he wouldn't have done a thing to the ending, as Sidney Crosby gave the Penguins a 4-3 victory at Madison Square Garden by being the only one of six players to score during the shootout.
Crosby, who endured a stretch of remarkable futility in shootouts earlier this season, made it look effortless again last night, as he threw a puck between the legs of New York goalie Henrik Lundqvist to end the Penguins' two-game skid before it mutated into a genuine losing streak.
"It's a character win," Therrien said. "We were down two goals going into the third period, and we found a way to come back."
The Penguins (34-20-9) played most of the game without defenseman Mark Eaton, who appeared to injure his right knee early in the first period. He is scheduled to return to Pittsburgh today and will not be available for their game at 7:08 p.m. today at Carolina.
Eaton's spot presumably will be taken by Alain Nasreddine, a healthy scratch last night, although recently acquired Joel Kwiatkowski also is available.
Eaton actually took a shift after being injured, which apparently happened when tried to hit New York winger Ryan Hollweg, but then adjourned to the dressing room. Team officials would characterize his problem only as a "lower-body injury" and said it will be evaluated today.
Losing Eaton for an extended period would be a significant setback for the Penguins -- "You can't say that he wouldn't be missed," defenseman Brooks Orpik said -- but it could have been worse, because there was a time early in the second period when it looked as if rookie Jordan Staal's left shoulder had been injured after Hollweg took him hard into the boards.
Staal said his problem was nothing more than a "stinger," but Hollweg apparently didn't get the memo that opponents aren't supposed to hit the Penguins' skilled players now that Georges Laraque is on the payroll.
New York lost a defenseman, too, as Fedor Tyutin got a sprained left knee early in the second period after absorbing a hard hit from left winger Gary Roberts, who made his Penguins debut and played primarily on the No. 1 line with Crosby and Mark Recchi.
"My toughest job is staying out of [Crosby's] way, I think," Roberts said. "He's very impressive, a very mature kid."
Neither team scored until 17:36 of the second period, when Penguins defenseman Rob Scuderi inadvertently knocked a Jaromir Jagr rebound behind goalie Marc-Andre Fleury with his left skate.
Sixty-nine seconds later, Rangers center Michael Nylander beat Fleury from above the left dot to make it 2-0.
Staal, however, revived the Penguins with a brilliant individual effort early in the third, scoring his league-leading sixth short-handed goal at 1:16.
He got the puck from Ryan Malone, rushed it up ice and, after dancing around Matt Cullen, a forward who was playing the point, stuck a shot high over Lundqvist's stick for his 26th goal.
"I knew [Cullen] was a forward, and I knew [Malone] was a little behind, so I kind of took it on my own," Staal said.
His goal was the Penguins' first in 132 minutes, 50 seconds, but it didn't take them nearly that long to get another. Colby Armstrong tied it, 2-2, with short-handed goal No. 2 at 3:45, as he banked a shot from behind the goal line off the right post and Lundqvist's leg, then into the net for his eighth.
"We were saying, 'Keep taking penalties, boys,' " Orpik said, chuckling.
He was kidding, of course. Particularly because Blair Betts of New York swatted in a loose puck from the slot for a power-play goal 58 seconds after Armstrong scored.
The Penguins, though, converted on a seven-second power play they got with a little more than six minutes left in regulation, as Sergei Gonchar scored from the slot after only six of them had expired.
That was the last puck to elude either goalie until Crosby beat Lundqvist in the shootout. And, in the process, provided the perfect ending for a thoroughly improbable story.
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(Dave Molinari can be reached at DWMolinari@Yahoo.com. )
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