Ron Cook, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/penguins/
Matt Freed/Post-Gazette
Bill Guerin scores the winning goal against the Flyers in overtime.
More often than not, there is justice in the Stanley Cup playoffs. The teams in any series usually deserve what they get in each game. So it was for the Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers in Game 2 last night at Mellon Arena. The Penguins were the better team with the better goaltender. It only seemed right that they were rewarded with a 3-2 overtime win when Bill Guerin scored on a 5-on-3 power play to send Elvis out of the old building at precisely 10:23 p.m.
That puts the Penguins up in the series in a big way, two games to none, with the hostilities due to resume in Game 3 tomorrow afternoon in Philadelphia. Although it's too soon to write off the Flyers -- they aren't the same lame bunch that was badly overmatched against the Penguins in the playoffs last season without injured defensemen Kimmo Timonen and Braydon Coburn -- there is no real reason to think they'll be able to climb back into the series. Desperate to avoid digging themselves that 0-2 hole, they took their best shot last night, and it wasn't quite good enough, even though they led, 2-1, with fewer than four minutes to play in regulation. That hurtful realization should hit them hard today, if it hasn't already.
Good luck dealing with that.
But the Flyers have a lot more to worry about than their emotional damage. To win four of five games against the Penguins in the days ahead, they're going to have to figure out a way to beat goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury.
To repeat:
Good luck with that.
Going into the series, the consensus was that the Penguins had a significant edge in goal with Fleury over Flyers netminder Marty Biron. Two games in, that advantage is even more apparent.
Guerin got the richly deserved, loud ovation for getting the winning goal -- his second of the game -- and Evgeni Malkin was hailed as a hero when he scored the tying goal on a deflection off his right leg with 3:37 left in regulation, but Fleury was the real star. His spectacular saves -- three of 'em by my unofficial count against Jeff Carter, Arron Asham and Carter again -- allowed the Penguins to hang around long enough to win.
The best of Fleury's 38 stops was his second one robbing Carter with 8Â 1/2 minutes left in regulation and the Penguins down, 2-1. Carter -- a 46-goal man during the season -- pounced on a rebound and appeared to have an open net before Fleury somehow stuck out his right skate to deflect the shot wide.
A goal there and the series is tied, 1-1.
Peter Diana/Post-Gazette
Kris Letang, right, congratulates Bill Guerin's game winner.
"I happened to see that save looking up on the Jumbotron," Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said. "It looked like a for-sure goal. Somehow, he got his skate or his pad out there to stop it. It was a remarkable save and it kept the game within reach at that point."
Added equally impressed Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik, "It kind of reminded me of his toe save on the two-on-one against [Detroit's Mikael Samuelsson] in the finals last year. His feet are just so quick. He's able to come out of nowhere to stop the puck."
Everybody knows how huge it is to have a world-class goaltender at playoff time when the goals are so hard to come by. But Orpik put it into words as well as anyone ever has.
"You play a whole different style when your goaltender is making those saves. You play to make plays instead of playing not to make mistakes. You're just so confident that, if you do make a mistake, he's going to be there to bail you out."
Biron, for his part, just wasn't quite as good. That's why it would have been a crying shame if the Penguins had somehow lost, 2-1. It's not so much that Malkin and Sidney Crosby hit posts early in the game and that Ruslan Fedotenko nearly leaked in a second-period goal off Biron's glove. And it's not as if Biron can be blamed for Malkin's tying goal.
But Guerin's winner wasn't the best of goals from a goaltender's perspective, even though the Flyers were down two skaters because of a couple of undisciplined penalties by Mike Knuble and Claude Giroux during a 30-second span in the final three-plus minutes of overtime. Guerin took a pass from defenseman Sergei Gonchar to Biron's right and somehow beat him with a wrist shot to the short side, even though Biron appeared to square up against him.
A goaltender has to play the post in that spot, right?
While the Penguins celebrated a win, by rights, they had coming, the Flyers were left to talk a brave game before they headed into the night for their flight to Philadelphia.
"If nothing else, we showed we can play with these guys," coach John Stevens said.
Play with the Penguins, yes.
Beat them, no.
Ron Cook can be reached at rcook@post-gazette.com.
First published on April 18, 2009 at 12:00 am
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