Saturday, February 28, 2009

Shooting Blackbirds:


It's not very often you can look at a 5-4 game and say what a good job your goalie has done. But this is one of those times. Marc Andre Fleury made some absolutely sick saves, especially in the third period when he faced 20 out of the 45 shots he'd see for the game, to give the Pens the chance to win in overtime.



By the way, these guys are driving me insane and add to that the tremendous amount of money I'm blowing on Pepto and you can see the problem I'm having. 2 goals in the first period, Staal with a bottle rattler and then my new friend Chris Kunitz slips one underneath Huet, and where was he? Parked in front of the net. Add to that 2 pretty good short handed chances and a couple of classic cases of Flower puck robbery, and I just had such a warm glow going into the first intermission Error and Stogie's babbling just faded to a muted background noise. Then the second period..... enough said... blind, biased refs and weird bounces leading to another power play goal by Towes (how is that Taves anyway?) and I was reaching for my Phillips Screwdriver (Milk of Magnesia and vodka) when Toew's high sticked a puck into the net, (that Error and Stogie were quite willing to give him). After it was disallowed Miro showed the Midwest the Power of Satan and then Mad Maximus was lifted and plastered into the glass by Dupuis after he dinked one off of the defenseman's skate 45 seconds later. So I put my disgusting drink down but then picked it right back up when the Pens seemed to have a mid-season flashback allowing the Darkbirds 20 shots in the third period and then allowing 2 more goals. Toews scored the Power Play hat trick and I nearly puked into mine... but managed to hang on to my doublestack cheeseburger long enough for Geno to blast a no-look pass from the Sarge right into the net over Neimi's shoulder. I salute the Sarge, that pass was a thing of beauty.


Things that are still good: Geno is still tops in the League in scoring and assists, Sarge has a 6 game scoring streak, the Pens are only 2 points (68) behind 6th place Florida (70 with 2 games in hand) They're still sitting in 10th but the rest are coming back toward us. All four teams (9th-6th) play tomorrow, so we shall see how that plays out.
Well, time for the Ratt to fire up the Zamboni and travel on to Dallas where the Pens will meet the Stars on Sunday (oh crap! another Sunday afternoon game).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Way to go boyz and the Flower! I was quite impressed with Flower despite giving up the lead. The man had 41 saves which reminded me about the glorious Stanley Cup Finals Game 5 triple overtime and Flower 55 saves. Not that I wanted to see triple overtime or even a shootout but man he was on fire last night. Which reminds me I cannot wait till Thursday when the boyz are in Fla. Got Mar and April 5 tickets and I am stoked. Just got to get my Flower jersey back from it being customized but its all good.

stagerat said...

Very cool... I am so jealous, I think I've said before that the last time I was in Sunrise I left a hole in the parking lot. I'm not sure they want me back, or I'd ask you if you had an extra ticket. BTW The lady that does the jerseys for the pens customized mine, it's got 1 (my number) and Bam Bam (one of my nicknames) on the back, it's very cool looking with the authentic letters and numbers. Just thought I'd try to make you just a little jealous of me in return... lol