PITTSBURGH VS WASHINGTON
VERIZON CENTER – WASHINGTON, DC
8:00 PM EST. NBC
PITTSBURGH LEADS SERIES 1-0
This one is gravy. The Pens did the job and stole a game in Washington Thursday night and will go for a 2nd tonight.
You can make a pretty compelling case that we will see a better effort from the Pens tonight. They were heavily out shot at even-strength and the corsi chart was NSFW. As Jesse pointed out on twitter, you’re not going to see back-to-back games play out like that from the Pens. They’re gonna bring it tonight.
Not to pump my own tires but before game one I tweeted this.
https://twitter.com/Rezzersup/status/857731683373654017
If the Pens are going to continue on and win this series they need 87 to be the best he’s ever been. Yes, they’ll need Fleury to play out of his mind for 4 games and yeah they’ll need the defense to pretend the ghost of Kris Letang is protecting them, but series like this call for superstars to be superstars.
The Pens are, on paper, the inferior team. We’ve heard it all post-season, if you’re on twitter you can’t avoid seeing something about it every 5 minutes.
Crosby played like a man on a mission, you could see it in his eyes after the 2nd goal, not just how badly he wants a 3rd cup, but how badly he wants to beat this Washington team. The Washington team that everyone has already anointed and moved on to the ECF by every pundit out there.
“Caps in 6, Caps in 5, Caps in 6.” You don’t think that shit bothers him? He’s a weirdo. Hockey is all he cares about. Now there’s another boss to defeat, arguably a bigger and badder one than he’s faced before. I still don’t know if he can do it; I just know it’s gonna be fun as hell to watch him try.
Lines: Hagelin back?
Hags was full-go in practice Friday playing with Kessel and Malkin; it’s unclear if that trio stick and where Rust goes if it does. I would imagine Wilson or Kuhnhackl are the candidates for the scratch. For the Caps, Karl Alzner who knows who cares.
Pittsburgh:
Guentzel-Crosby-Hornqvist
Rust-Malkin-Kessel
Wilson-Bonino-Sheary
Kunitz-Cullen-Kuhnhackl
Dumoulin-Hainsey
Cole-Schultz
Maatta-Daley
Fleury-Jarry
Washington:
Ovechkin-Backstrom-Oshie
Johansson-Kuznetsov-Williams
Burakovsky-Eller-Wilson
Winnik-Beagle-Connolly
Schmidt-Carlson
Orlov-Niskanen
Orpik-Shattenkirk
Holtby-Grubauer
I’ll leave you with this. Watching game 1 brought me two comforting thoughts.
First. Brooks Orpik plays for the Washington Capitals and even in the most dire of times he will have to come onto the ice and when that happens there’s a strong chance he’s gonna fuck something up. At this rate Orpik may go down as one of the all-time great Penguins dmen solely for his time in Washington.
Second. Usually when I watch hockey I keep a tab open on hockeystats.ca just so I can check corsi and all that stuff throughout the course of the game. Between refreshing that and looking at all the models pre-game saying the Pens had no chance and might as well just get healthy for next year it’s important to remember SCIENCE IS A LIAR SOMETIMES
— Mike Pfeil (@mikeFAIL) April 24, 2017
GO PENS
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