The Penguins had already proven that they could get by without Stanley Cup Final Game 7 MVP Max Talbot as they roared out to a 10-2-0 record to start the season. They even proved that they could win without Sergei Gonchar on the blueline. Then they proved they could win without Mister (Tyler) Kennedy who has provided a lot of offense on the young season. But what about a win without Evgeni Malkin? Yep, they did that too beating the Blue Jackets in Columbus last night.

It was what people in sports call a character win, when a team that is beat up and missing key components still finds a way to muck it out and get the victory. Yeah, Columbus is struggling after a decent start but they still found a way to win even after falling behind first 2-0 and then 3-1. Oh, and I don’t want to overlook the contribution of thousands of Pittsburgh fans that made the trek to Columbus and repeatedly roared to life to drown out the hometown fans either.

After Rick Nash (7, scored twice, Chris Kunitz (2) scored his second goal in two nights (after a long drought) and short handed to cut the Penguins deficit in half. But when Derek Dorsett (1) scored late in the second to make it 3-1 it would have been easy for the Penguins to mail it in and start thinking about a Halloween night showdown against Minnesota.

In the third the Blue Jackets played conservative and Brent Johnson stopped all six shots he faced. Meanwhile the Penguins, especially late, put their noses down and played hard. With the clock winding inside three minutes to play it was Ruslan Fedotenko (3) who found a rebound and buried it.

3-2 Columbus.

Just 39 seconds later it was Alex Goligoski (5) who wristed a shot past Mason.

3-3 and a tie hockey game.

Columbus held Pittsburgh off in the overtime and then the cardiac kids took the game into a shootout. In the end the winning shot was not that glorious or awe inspiring. But it did come off of the stick of Sidney Crosby. In the shootout Crosby wound his way down the ice and flipped a puck at Mason who looked to stop the puck in his chest. But as the play continued, Mason drifted, could not find the puck, it dropped to the ice and momentum carried it between his stick and his pads.

Victory to the Penguins.

At 11-2-0 the Penguins own the best record in the league and kept pace with Colorodo (10-2-2) who also has 22 pts. Their opponent tonight is one of the worst teams in the league as Minnesota (4-9-0, 8 pts)comes to the Igloo. It’s Halloween and hopefully the injury riddled Penguins won’t play too scary and notch a win against a team that is just two for their last five and three of their last seven.

The Penguins need to look into a good exterminator because their locker room is infested with injury bugs. So far every time a Pittsburgh Penguin has gone down, the team has kept right on winning. With Gonchar out the team has hardly looked like it missed a beat. With Mr. Hockeyburgh 2009, Tyler Kennedy, out and his goal production absent from the lineup on Wednesday night the team slaughtered the Candiens. But now with Evgeni Malkin out two, perhaps three weeks, with a sore shoulder the team must overcome another hurdle.

The Penguins are perhaps lucky to be be 10-2-0 and leading the Atlantic this season early on because the odds of them going 10-2-0 in their next twelve is going to be a tall order. Games against the Kings, Sharks and Devils will be certainly offset by games against the Ducks, Panthers and the Wild. But they still are going to have to have a lot of guys play above their level to be as impressive over that stretch. Most fans would probably be happy with a .500 record but be sure the Penguins players will not be.

Staal is getting a promotion, basically by default, to the second line because any line he centers in the absence of Malkin is the Pen’s #2 unit. Players like Rupp and Adams are going to be called upon to do even more.

And it all starts tonight as the Pens visit the so-so Columbus Bluejackets. A win tonight helps set them off the next part of this year’s journey on the right foot. A loss probably makes them wonder what they will need to do to succeed for a couple weeks until Malkin returns.

I’ve been under the weather the past couple of days but one thing I have been following, and waiting until I could hold down my lunch long enough to comment on, are two events that I think show that the NHL really has not gotten serious about the issue of players that take liberties on other players and leave serious injuries in their wake. Yeah, yeah … I know. Every year we hear rumors about how the NHL is going to get serious about dangerous hits. Yadda yadda.

But the truth? The truth is that this claim that NHL is going to lay down the law when it comes to dangerous hits that leave players injured is like rumors that someone has found solid evidence that Big Foot is real. It makes great for great press but it about as trustworthy as the later.

We are coming off two serious incidents. Tuomo Ruutu (brother of ex-Penguins Jarko Ruutu) boarded Darcy Tucker and Mike Richards leveled David Booth with a shoulder to the noggin. I’ve watched the videos and while the Ruutu hit could be considered marginal (Tucker put himself in a vulnerable position but that still does not excuse Ruutu) I still believe that he should have realized the vulnerable position Tucker was in and acted accordingly and not run him into the boards. The Richards hit however was an intentional lead with the shoulder. He saw Booth was in a vulnerable position and he purposely went after his head with his shoulder.

And the result of these two most recent examples of the NHL’s new “tougher” stance on dirty play? Richards played in the Panthers Sunday loss to the Sharks and Ruutu gets a three games suspension. As for the victims? Tucker is down and out indefinitely and Booth … well no one knows quite yet except to say that he will be out for at least a week.

Listen, I understand how fast hockey is. I understand that these are big guys out there and that when they get to moving it is sometimes tough to get them to stopping. I also understand that sometimes accidents with sticks happen. But year after year the NHL does nothing to really curtail the most egregious incidents of dirty play that border on goonism.

The NHL needs to take some simple steps to curtain these sorts of incidents. The first is that the NHL, subject to a review of the incident, needs to automatically suspend the player guilty of the infraction indefinitely until the injured player returns. Without pay. And without a giving a damn about the NHLPA and their thoughts on the matter.

I know the concept of allowing the league to review each incident and make a decision is bound to be unpopular. The league already comes under fire every year for showing favorability to its higher profile players and the first time one of them was found “no guilty” for some hit or another there would be an outcry. But you cannot treat the true accidental hit or marginal hit when fighting for a puck or when the victim puts himself in a vulnerable position at the last instance the same as the guy that tracks his prey down and takes a run at him.

Hitting is part of hockey. It should remain as such. But the safety of the players also needs to be considered. And if hits that knock a player out for months warrant a suspension of just a few games then there really is not much incentive to play a little more caution and with a care for your fellow players.

Thomas Vokoun backstopped the Florida Panthers for two perfect periods and Steven Reinprecht scored two goals for his team as the Penguins found themselves down 2-0 heading into the third. Brent Johnson let in one so-so goal and one soft goal in the first but played strong for most of the night finding ways to keep Florida from making the deficit worse.

It was in the second period that Pittsburgh started to turn things around. But Vokoun was up to the task stopping all 14 shots by the Pens in that frame.

Then came the third period and who stepped up? None other than Sidney Crosby. Just 2:14 in and on a power play Sid found the back of the net as Vokoun was not able to move as fast as the cross ice pass. Then a little later Sid thought he had his second goal, but a review showed that the play was a hand pass to Bill Guerin and it was waved off.

That’s ok, because Sid was not to be denied. With the Penguins down a man it was both Malkin and Crosby on the ice together to kill the penalty. Malkin raced down the rink with the puck, looped behind the goal and fed Sid in front who buried it to tie the game.

After a scoreless overtime it was Sid that scored the only goal in the shootout to give the Penguins the comeback win. The victory pushes the Penguins record to 9-1-0 (18 pts) and keeps them atop the East and the Atlantic wit the season still young. Tonight they hit the ice again to host the New Jersey Devils (5-3-0).

Martin Skoula played well (+1) in his first live game action of the season filling in for the injured Sergei Gonchar.

Last night’s game at the Igloo against the St. Louis Blues was brutal. It was a slaughter. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Whether the St. Louis Blues were flat or the Penguins were just motivated will be much the topic of conversation today and perhaps it was a little bit of both spurred on by the later. Because one thing is clear and that is that the Penguins throttled the Blues from the opening face off.

When the first period ended, even if the Penguins would have played with six skaters and no goalie the worst the sore could have been was 3-2 Blues. That’s because the Blues managed only three shots in the first twenty minutes of play. The Penguins? Well they peppered Mason with 20 shots and had it not been for some fantastic saves they would have scored much more than just two goals. The period was well half over before the Blues even registered a shot on net. Yeah, it was that bad.

Mr. Hockeyburgh 2009, Tyler (Mister) Kennedy, scored his fifth goal of the season at 11:19 from McKee and Cooke to put the Penguins up 1-0. Then Evgeni (MVP) Malkin scored just over a minute later on the power play to push the lead to 2-0.

In the second the bloodbath continued as the Penguins outshot the stunned Blues 15-8 adding a powerplay tally from Ruslan Fedotenko (2) at 7:29 and then a quick strike half a minute later from Kris Letang (2). Paul Kariya, yes he is still playing hockey, gave the Blues their only goal of the game almost five minutes after that for his fourth goal of the season.

Alex Goligoski (2) dashed all hopes of a comeback midway through the third as he moved the lead to four goals and a score of 5-1.

Fleury stopped, once the night was through, 22 of 23 shots.

Defenseman Sergei Gonchar left the game with what is reported to be a broken bone in his hand possibly sidelining him for a month and opening a spot on the active roster for Martin Skoula who has been waiting in the wings for a chance to play.

The win gave the Penguins their eighth victory in nine games (8-1-0, 16pts) and are atop the Atlantic Division and the Eastern Conference. Their only loss was the shutout suffered at the hands of the Phoenix Coyotes with Johnson in net. Fleury has remained perfect however to help the Penguins to their impressive start. He is 8-0-0 with a .926 Sv% and a 1.96 GAA. The next game is Friday night against the Florida Panthers (2-4-0) and with a game the next night against the New Jersey Devils (4-3-0) it looks likely that Fluery will get a rest and Johnson will have a chance to redeem himself against another sub-par team.

When Mike Rupp fakes you out and puts the puck behind you, as a goalie you have every right to be a little upset. Cam Ward certainly did and while Mike Rupp is not a fourth line scrub and does have hockey skills, they don’t admittedly get showcased on a nightly basis. So when he came in on a two on one with Cam Ward sitting between the pipes, moved to the forehand and then at the last second, with Ward leaning, flipped back to his back hand and buried the puck to give the Penguins a 1-0 lead you could almost see Ward’s eyes rolling under his mask.

It was Rupp’s first goal of the season and it won’t be his last.

Malkin (3) scored early in the second to put the Penguins up 2-0 but the Hurricanes answered back in the third with two redirects from Ray Whitney (2, 3) to tie the game up and Cam Ward committed highway robbery on a point blank chance from Bill Guerin. Guerin was standing in the crease when the puck came to his stick and Ward was halfway passed the post but still was just barely able to snatch out his glove hand and put it right where the puck was headed into the net. A video review showed that while close his glove was not completely in the net which would have made the play a goal.

In overtime both teams played up and down the ice trying to end the game to no avail. Fleury was one again solid in goal stopping 27 of 29 shots on the night.

In the shootout it took a while to determine who would earn the extra point for the win. Fleury stopped Samsonov then Ward stopped Letang. In round two both Jussi Jokinen and Sidney Crosby found the net. Then came round three and both Ruutu and Guerin were stopped. Off to round four … Matt Cullen and Alex Goligoski both missed the net. Round five anyone? Fleury redeemed himself by stopping Whitney and Ward answered by stopping Evgeni Malkin who looked less than enthusiastic in his attempt. But it was round six that would decide everything.

Eric Staal was tapped for Carolina and Chris Kunitz got the nod for the Penguins. Fleury stopped Staal but Ward could not do the same against Kunitz. Kunitz buried his shot five hole against the Carolina net minder and the rest, as they say, is history. The Penguins capped a 5-0 road trip record to start the season and moved to 6-1-0 (12 pts) on the season.

They return home Saturday to face the Tampa Bay Lightning who are 2-1-2 and leading the once again anemic South East with just 6 points.

Notes:

- Chris Kunitz has been under a little heat this year for not having scored a goal during regulation or overtime. Although he has registered 4 assists and is a plus one, most people expect him to put the puck in the net playing along side Crosby and Guerin. The truth is that not everyone can score and sometimes players have droughts. It is not like Kunitz has not contributed and hopefully his goal in the shootout last night will silence some of his critics.
- Marc-Andre Fleury continues to make a case that he belongs on Canada’s Olympic team and possibly even be the starter. He is 6-0 with a .917 Sv% and a 2.27 GAA this season.
- -5? Yep that is what Sergei Gonchar is after six games this season. Maybe not that big of a deal you say? Well, he has 5 points himself (4 of which have come at even strength) … that means that he has been on the ice for 9 of the opposition’s even strength goals! The Penguins have allowed 17 goals (6 on the PP and 11 at even strength). That means that Gonchar has been on the ice for 82% (9 / 11 = .818%) of the opposition’s even strength goals which is unacceptable and I am sure Sarge knows that.