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.