Evgeni Malkin (28) and Matt Cooke (9) scored a goal each and Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 28 of 29 shots to secure a 2-1 victory over the second seeded Bruins this after noon.  Orpik added punctuation to a physical game by sending Bruin Daniel Paille flying some 20 feet across center ice with a crushing check late in the second period.  The Penguins simply out physicalled a strugling Boston squad which coming into the game was just 5-4-1 in their last 10 matches.

Pittsburgh did not register the kinds of shot totals they have been, putting just 28 shots on net for the game and Fleury was strong down the stretch with several key saves on scoring chances with the Briuns looking to tie the game late.  James Neal led the way for the Penguins with six shots.  Newcommer Cal O’Reilly had just one shot and a prime scoring chance that he failed to convert on.  Pittsburgh has to do a quick turnaround and face off against New Jersey at 1:00 PM tomorrow.

It is being deemed “radical” what the NHL has done in terms of realignment for the 2012 season.  I personally don’t think anything “radical” needed to be done.  The NHL could have just moved Winnipeg to the Western Conference’s Central Division and Columbus to the East, maybe, and I emphasize the maybe, shifting around some of the East’s teams so that Columbus wasn’t in the South East, which would have been a little silly.

But instead they decided to be “radical”.  Starting in 2012, the NHL will play with four yet to be named conferences as follows:

Conference D:
New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York Rangers, New York Islanders, Washington and Carolina

Conference C:
Boston, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Buffalo, Florida and Tampa Bay

Conference B:
Detroit, Columbus, Nashville, St. Louis, Chicago, Minnesota, Dallas and Winnipeg

Conference A:
Los Angeles, Anaheim, Phoenix, San Jose, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Colorado

Each conference will send its top four teams into the playoffs with the playoffs starting out with games among the top four teams in each conference.  After that the teams will be reseeded leading to the very real potential for an all Western or all Eastern Stanley Cup Final.  It think that is bad but hey, what do I know right?  I thought this could have been solved by moving just two teams.

Anyway, the Penguins are now in what I would call potentially the toughest of all the conferences based on the teams as they currently are.  They will have to contend with Washington, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Carolina for one of the top four places in that conference.  And let us not forget the New York Rangers too.  Year in and year out that is six quality teams vying for four spots and you know the Penguins are going to get shut out at least once in the near future from the playoffs based on that.

Once good thing about this realignment is that the regular season now means a lot more than it has in the past.  You don’t have 15 teams competing for eight spots.  You have seven or eight teams competing for just four.  You don’t have to just be better than the bottom half of the Eastern or Western Conference but better than the bottom half of your, essentially, division.  Yes, I know they are calling them conferences, but they are more like divisions to me.

Really, ok, that is fine.  No more coasting in to eighth place on the last day of the season.  Now play hard all season or be left behind.  Although the loser in this could be the teams that are not perennially good and the New York Islanders look to not be making any playoff appearances any time soon based on their lot in “Conference D”.  I think that hurts the game if you ask me.  I mean, we are not talking about a conference with only one or two perennial powers but, again, a conference with the Penguins, Flyers, Rangers, Captials, Hurricanes and Devils in in.  Seriously?  If I were an Islanders fan, and I am not because I actually know a thing or two about hockey, I would be screaming bloody murder.

It is what it is though.  I liked the current set up and didn’t think, again other than two moves, that it needed changing.  But hockey seems to be a sport with fickle women in charge of it.  They realign more that a car with a bad front end.

It is January 1st. And while we are in the middle of a fluke warm snap and it is raining, that means the day of the Winter Classic is also upon us. Although the start time has been moved to 8 PM, to avoid the rain, the game will apparently still go on at Heinz Field here in Pittsburgh.

It will be the second game of the season between the Washington Capitals and the Penguins when the puck drops this evening. It will be the second meeting of the season between His Sidness and Ovechkin once the blades of the skates dig in and players start to grind for the puck.

Sidney Crosby leads the league in goals (32) and points (65) and unlike previous years, Ovechin is not right there with him. Ovechkin has just 14 goals and 42 points this so far this season and although the Capitals are 22-12-5 and 5th in the East, they are getting it done without riding Ovechkin as hard as in the past.

This Winter Classic, unlike those in the past, will not feature snow which will undoubtedly have some crying foul. Some people have thought, and complained loudly, that Pittsburgh was too far south to hold this event. This was mostly because they wanted to keep it in their own cities almost exclusively (such as Boston, Buffalo, Detroit, etc.) But the fact is that according to weather forecasts for today many northern hockey cities would be in the same predicament.

Buffalo – 51 and rainy
Boston – 49 with rain moving into the evening
Detroit – 49 and rainy
New York – 44 with rain later in the day

Yeah, none of these cities would have been better so unless you want to keep the game in Canada where you will be pretty much guaranteed snow every New Year’s Day, complaining about the weather is just bad sport.

None-the-less the game will go on. And most of the complainers will go away at 8 PM as we watch two of the league’s best teams take to the ice.

It was a night of back and forth hockey as the Penguins finally found ways to score goals, partially thanks to the return of Evgeni Malkin who had missed two weeks resting and injury. But as the Penguins scored so did the Boston Bruins. Until late it was the Penguins that would go up on the scoreboard and then force the Bruins to answer. At 17:31 of the third it was Marco Sturm that gave Boston their first lead of the night 5-4.

Brent Johnson started in net for the Penguins. Why, I don’t really know. Perhaps it was just to shake up the team which had struggled mightily the past few games with large portions of its Stanley Cup championship team out of the lineup with a variety of injuries. While he has played well this season, it still baffles me.  But the start of Johnson proved a mix blessing at best for every time the Penguins scored he seemed to allow a soft goal or a goal that was a result of him misreading a pretty obvious play. On Boston’s first goal, for example, with a Bruin (Krejci) set up behind the net, both defensemen moved to take the man with the puck. Numbers has been something that the Penguins have lacked when going for pucks and on this play they decided to overwhelm, and neutralize the puck carrier. Johnson saw this, yet he still seemed more concerned with the man behind the net rather than Blake Wheeler moving to the opposite post. Johnson looked like he was expecting a wrap around out to his right from the man behind the net (who was completely neutralized) and he got beat by the man coming to his left. It was a pretty bad play.

However, Johnson also made some spectacular, if not frantic saves throughout the game. It was a love hate relationship I had with him all night long as I sat in my seats in section D-7 and watched.  He finished with 28 saves on 33 shots.

Yes, all looked lost as the clock ran down in the third as the Penguins, with their goal tender pulled and down a goal could not seem to get anything going and were trapped in their own end. Then with the clock at 0:10 there was signs of life. A stick broke on the Bruins side and Sidney Crosby passed up to Malkin who gained the Bruins zone. The clock ticked to 0:04. Then Malkin found Billy Guerin racing down the far side of the ice and as the clock wound to 0:02, Guerin let loose a shot that beat Tim Thomas with just 0:00.4 left on the clock.

The crowd errupted in cheers thankful that the Bruins had missed several shots at the open net. Malkin and Crosby played side by side most of the night and while they had been productive from the opening puck drop, there was no doubt as the clock wound to 0:00 and the third period came to a close tied at 5-5 that the two headed monster was indeed alive, well and very, very hungry.

Malkin in his return finished with 3 assists and a +3. Crosby finished with 1 goal, 2 assists and a +3. But the hero of the game? That would be Pascal Dupuis who, in overtime, took a feed from behind the Bruins net from Jordan Staal who raced for a loose puck and caught Tim Thomas flat footed at the side of the cage. The puck squirted free to Dupuis who shuffled the puck into the empty net for the 6-5 win.

The Penguins spread the love last night getting goals from five different players including two defensively minded defensement. The goal scorers for Pittsburgh were Jay McKee (1), Pascal Dupuis (4, 5), Sidney Crosby (10), Mark Eaton (2) and Bill Guerin (4).

The win stops the Penguins four game skid and boosts their record to 13-7-0 (26 pts) ahead of Monday nights game against the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.

It is funny to listen to some pundits who think they know so much. If I hear one more of these folks talking about how this team lacks “chemistry” and that is why they are not winning games right now I have a question. Where were you complaining about “chemistry” when the team was 5-4-2 in October or 9-2-1 in November with basically the same lineup minus their best face off man in Zigomanis and the spark plug that is Tyler Kennedy?

Lack of “chemistry”? Don’t make me laugh! That is a cop out excuse and everyone making it knows it. “Chemistry” is like that catch all category of everything you cannot explain but try to explain.

No, the problem with the Penguins is clear and has been clear all year – they lack the desire to play a team game for 60 full minutes every night. Last night against Boston was another prime example of this. You had players like Orpik, Dupuis, Jeffrey and Wallace grinding out every shift. You had people like Malkin also playing hard, but playing what amounted to a singular style without a focus on where his teammates are and what they could do for him. You had defensemen watch pucks dangle in front of them, just feet away, but that they would not dare do fight for because they knew there was no one rotating over to cover up for them.

I don’t think the problems could have been any more clear than they were last night or any other night during their December slump. The team doesn’t need a trade, it needs those players on the ice to play hockey and play it with a focus on playing as a team.

What Therrien needs to do, and I have already said this, is to sit some of the players who are not playing hard for 60 minutes. Satan comes to mind. So does Staal. Maybe it is wrong to say that players like Satan and Staal are not playing hard for 60 full minutes. Perhaps it is more correct to say that they are playing hard, but not playing smart enough to make that hard work pay off. They are not thinking five seconds ahead and finding that open ice where someone can feed them the puck. They are not making smart decisions with their passes.

Other players are dumping pucks without a purpose into the offensive zone. They are putting pucks where no one from the Penguins has a chance to get to them. Other players are not even trying to get into the corners and hunt for pucks and going back on their heals.

It’s not that hard. It’s just hockey. And it is something, I remind you all, that these guys are paid good money to do because they are some of the best in the world. It is high time they start acting like it.