Meet Me in St. Louie, Louie:

Marc Andre Fleury allowed 3 goals on 22 shots in the Gateway City to give the Blues the blues. The Tower of Flower Power had a solid, sometimes flashy excursion between the 'arches' in St Louis, despite allowing 2 goals on only 4 shots in the first, at which point many bridges in the Golden Triangle where crowded with despondent, soon to be damp, Pensaddicts. Flower and the FPL tightened up, and shut down the Blues and their #1 PP for most of the rest of the game. MAF will be at BC Sports in the Ross Park Mall from 12:00-1:30 Sunday to sign autographs (if you buy a little 50-60 buck autograph ticket), sorry, slipped up on this one and didn't get the news until late.

Recap-ish: The 'Saved by Zero' commercial must die the death. Ok, that being said, about halfway through the first, Wolverine (Jackman, get it?) scored off a sneaky boomerang shot that didn't stay in the goal for more than a second, I was hopefully waiting for the replay, but it betrayed me by showing that the shot actually went in. Later, on a bad call/hipcheck/trip on Brooksie, Malkin (who let's face it, doesn't count face-offs as one of his skills), won two or three in a row to help the PK hold the enemy shotless. That shotless PP thing lasted for the first two periods. Pessonen's gold helmet tangent in the FSN booth, and how Steggies nephew is a better researcher than Steggo. Just when I was about to throw something at the screen during a Pens PP, Le-Tank flips a pass to El Sid who slips it to Satan who picks up his own errant pass to show Chris Mason the power of the Lord of the Infernal Realm with a nice wrist-shot over his shoulder. This would have been much cooler if Oslie hadn't scored off a good McClement pass 25 seconds later. (Cue cheesy Hee-Haw song) Intermission Question: Do they just shuffle those penguin/Potash commercials, or does someone actually watching the game pick them? And why do Potash's penguins get more play than the Pittsburgh Penguins during the break?

Second Period start reads like an FPL report. Scuds made a nice diving play, Le-Tank gets slashed by the God of wine and song (Baccus), no call. Go-Go scores on a nice wrister from near the blue line. Blues try to quick-counter again but the apparent goal was waved off on a high stick pass. Tank comes back and Flower makes a glove save on a shot that I didn't even see on slow-mo replay. Bobbo and Steggo go off on yet another tangent talking about how Alex Pietrangelo pronounces his name different than Frank to cover Steggie's butt for mispronouncing Frank's name all these years until we almost miss Brewer's holding Sid. Just about when you think the PP is hopeless, Geno slaps one from the blue line, through McKee's legs and past a confused Mason to make the score 3-2. Then 30 seconds later TK smacks his own rebound off Mason's butt to make the game 4-2. A few minutes later, Golden Helmet revved up Spaceballs I and mashed some Bluenote into the boards. Kevin and Vince over at Pessonen and the Pens are probably doing back flips watching this. Mason almost brainfarts one into his own goal, Errey almost has an aneurism talking about it. Just before the end of the period, Syko goes psycho on a Blues defenseman who was taking stick-liberties with El Capitan. As exciting as the second was, Error and Stogie want to talk about how Alex Pietrangelo is his own grandpa or the strange, almost West Virginian way that Alex and Frank are related..... I listened for 10 minutes and still don't understand it.

The Third Period was much more relaxing to watch, even though I wasn't counting this one as a win until it was in the bag. Chris Holt, the Blues backup goalie made a spectacular save... from the bench. And then we learned that it takes 4 blues players to take on one Energizer Bunny (TK) and Zigomanis is more than a face-off specialist. Ziggy was working his butt off, blocking shots, stealing pucks and taking shots. Orpik became the defensive beast we all know him to be and put Kariya on his butt. Later, Berglin picks up his own rebound and flips one past the Flower and things are tense while everyone waits for yet another melt-down, until 40 seconds later when Maximus (keep the French-Manchu, it's working) makes a deal with Satan to score his second goal of the year off of a nice clear by Orpik. MAF with some nice work in the final minutes and an empty net gift for Staal from Geno sealed the deal. 6-3

Wrap-up, wrap-up: Got to give the Pens credit. Even though the PP seemed to be more lucky than good sometimes, the PK was simply awesome shutting down the Blues, who despite some problems have a stellar PP. They didn't go into a shell at all in the third, keeping up the offensive pressure and scoring goals. The Zebra patrol seemed to have a bit of a problem seeing some fairly blatant slashing penalties, and the FSN duo had a bit of a problem repeating the word 'jump' 654 times and I now feel like a member of the Pietrangelo clan due to the genealogy laid out by Steigerwald.

Moronic Russian Quote of the Day: Alexander Semin has decided that since Ovie is out of the country he should do what he can to keep the Craps/Pens rivalry going. Either that or he feels safer knowing that it'll be Jan. 14th until he'll have to pay for his remarks about El Sid. You see Sperm the Worm has decided that El Capitan is just your average player hyped to the max. "I think if you take any player, even if he is 'dead wood' and start promoting him, you'll get a star. Especially if he scores 1oo points. No one is going to care about anyone else. No one is going to care whether he possesses great skill. Let's say you put someone in front of the net and let him deflect pucks in , and he scored 50 goal: everyone will say 'wow' and then hand him 10 mil per year." Uh.... 'dead wood' and '100' points don't normally go together. And all apologies to him, but that sounds a lot more like Ryan Malone than Troy and Trina's little boy. Just another case of a guy saying something contrivercial to get a rise and that becomes more important than the relative stupidity of the player making the comment. My advice? When you pay your dues, Alex, you'll get your props. Until then, keep your mouth shut and play hockey.