If you thought watching Denzel dominate Ryan Reynolds in Safe House at a matinee price was a good deal, you probably went nuts when you saw how much you got out of the Penguins in their matinee matchup with the Jets yesterday.
11 of the Pens’ 18 skaters picked up at least a point and seven different Pens scored as Geno Malkin and James Neal finally got to play an entire game without back pain as the Pens dominated Winnipeg 8-5 in the Jets’ first game in the Burgh in 15 years.
Geno Machino was operating at full steam, going for five points (1 G, 4 A) and Real Deal added a goal and an assist but for the first time in what seemed like forever, the rest of the team looked like they knew how to score goals too.
Every single one of Dan Bylsma’s lines attributed at least one goal, and even though the Pens were in a 0-2 hole eight minutes into the game, the Jordan Staal-rejuvenated Pens staged a huge offensive game that made Ondrej Pavelec look so bad that we almost forgot about how bad Marc-Andre Fleury looked.
Just forget about the five goals Fleury gave up – the Pens won, they don’t matter any more. This game was all about offense and there wasn’t a whole lot the Pens could have done better when they were in Jets’ airspace. Four Pens had multi-point games, they rattled off 39 shots on goal (their most since Jan. 24) and went 2-3 on the power play.
Dustin Jeffrey and Real Deal pulled off two Lee Harvey snipes within five minutes of each other to make sure the Pens went into the first intermission tied 2-2.
The Pens made it four unanswered goals thanks to Chris Kunitz’s power play goal 3:12 into the second period and Kris Letang’s first of the game at the game’s half way point. The Jets managed a ****** goal a little later but Geno embarrassed just about every Jet that was on the ice when he deked his way to goal No. 30 on the year to put the Pens up 5-3. Since he couldn’t catch Geno before he scored, Dustin Byfuglien gave Geno a nice punch to the back afterwards just because he’s a dick.
The third period was all about the secondary scoring that the Pens have been missing. Richard Park scored his fifth of the year, and fresh off a knee injury, in his first game back, Staal picked the low corner after a nice forced turnover and feed from Pascal Dupuis. Letang closed out the scoring by notching his first two-goal game of the year on the power play with 2:44 left.
Even though Letang scored twice and Kunitz finished with four points (1 G, 3 A), this game was still about Geno; he could. not. be. stopped. It wasn’t even his highest scoring games of the season but his five-point afternoon still gave him 67 points on the year and a nice five-point cushion over second-place scorers Steve Stamkos and Claude Giroux.
It was huge for the Pens to finally get everybody on offense clicking the same game. The eight goals tied a season best, so hopefully it’s a good sign of things to come now that Staal’s back in the lineup. Let’s just hope they didn’t blow their load before tonight’s game against the Lightning.
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