Goalie thievery works both ways

Friday, April 24, 2009
By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/

Peter Diana/Post-Gazette

Flyers goalie Martin Biron makes a save against Jordan Staal in the third period.


That game Marc-Andre Fleury stole in Philadelphia the other night?

Martin Biron stole it right back with a shaggy, 3-0 shutout last night at Mellon Arena, leaving the Penguins and Flyers pretty much even on the big larceny scoreboard and the homeward-bound Flyers just a win away from forcing a Game 7 here Monday night.

"It's going to be tough," said a grim-faced Sergei Gonchar in a quiet Penguins dressing room. "They're going to fight until the end."

Whatever momentum Game 5 created for the Flyers, and whatever they convert it to tomorrow afternoon in South Philly (and perhaps beyond), the Penguins already know what a precious opportunity hopped over their sticks inside a hushed Mellon Arena on a night when Sidney Crosby's eight-game postseason scoring streak evaporated.

"You don't want to look too much into it," said The Captain. "It's over. There's nothing we do about it now."

And he knows why you don't want to look too hard at it, as do the 17,132 assembled.

It's because almost from the moment the exclusively white-shirted crowd settled into the orange Mellon Arena seats, unwittingly resembling a Philadelphia audience, the Flyers were begging to get beat.

Aside from conspiring to construct a violent Crosby sandwich in the right wing corner, where Mike Richards and Darroll Powe converged on No. 87 in a flying two-man vice (Richards got in the better lick), the Flyers did little to feign interest in the first period and the majority of the second.

"I thought we played well in the first period," said Penguins interim coach Dan Bylsma. "I didn't think they played poorly."

Well, that's one of us.

Even Philadelphia's graduate-level penalty-killing program seemed fairly disinterested in the minutes after Ryan Parent went to the box for interfering with Crosby at 14:16 of the first period, allowing five excellent Penguins chances, all knocked away by Biron, the one person in road white who had appeared at least earnest.

It was a night when the importance of being earnest was paramount, as Biron's teammates were failing to get a shot in the final 13:38 of the first period, not to mention the first 2:32 of the second, totaling 15 minutes and 10 seconds of Game 5 when Fleury could have gone across the street to the Marriott for a cold one.

Had he seen the immediate future, he would have known that was the best option.

Just as the first layer of rust was forming on the Flower, Philadelphia's Arron Asham blasted one past him from 35 feet, erecting a 1-0 Flyers lead that Evgeni Malkin appeared to erase less than two minutes later. Horns sounded and hugs ensued, but, for some reason, the National Hockey League still does not consider it a goal when you kick the thing into the net, so Geno's moment was rightfully disallowed and Philly got its 1-0 groove back.

"That was a big point in the game," said Bylsma. "It might have been different had it been 1-1. We got a lot of guys in front of Biron, but he was big and strong."

Not satisfied with that 1-0 lead, the Flyers continued to chug through the neutral zone like a SEPTA bus belching black smoke until Daniel Briere took a stupid roughing penalty when he bumped Brooks Orpik after the whistle, providing the Penguins the opportunity to waste a seventh-consecutive power play, stretching back to the beginning of Game 4.

It wasn't until spunky Flyers rookie Claude Giroux rapped a rebound past Fleury at 3:27 of the final period that Philadelphia appeared to buy into the theory that it might just win in spite of itself.

I know, you hate spunk.

When Mike Knuble rifled a long rebound into the Penguins' net with less than seven minutes remaining for a 3-0 sealer, the Flyers suddenly looked frightfully spunkilicious in this series.

"We knew we couldn't just show up tonight and make it happen," said Crosby. "We have to earn it."

The Penguins didn't decline an invitation to the second round through any lack of effort. They managed 28 shots, 15 of them in a first period before the Flyers could settle into what proved to be a reasonably efficient defensive effort. But do not mistake Biron's performance last night for the kind of virtuosity Fleury displayed in the previous game.

Biron, by my somewhat unofficial count, made one great save in those 28 shots, a dazzling kickaway of Malkin's whistler from the right circle near the end of a first-period power play. Otherwise, the Penguins sent a lot of pucks into his belly.

"We had a lot of pucks that were around the net that we couldn't get a handle on," Crosby said. "[Biron] played well, but we didn't make it too tough on him."

If there's no correction in that area for Game 6, the Penguins will know exactly whom they're making it tough on.

Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com. More articles by this author
First published on April 24, 2009 at 12:00 am