Senators at Penguins - Postgame - 01-28-10
POSTGAME
-It's pretty clear what happened tonight. One team played perfectly. The other played poorly. (Expert analysis huh?)
-The Senators came into this game on a roll and executed a specific game plan perfectly against the Penguins. They clogged up the neutral zone and really limted the speed and space the Penguins could work with.
-And when you have a goaltender who is playing the way Elliott did tonight, it makes things so much easier. He was rare out of position. He rare gave up iffy rebounds and he just shut the Penguins down. If not for some poor defense by Anton Volchenkov in the first period, Elliott probably gets a shutout.
-One thing that didn't help the Penguins was the shoddy goaltending they got tonight. This might've been Marc-Andre Fleury's worst game on an individual level. He was just off tonight. Hey, it happens.
-Out side of a nice first period by the Malkin-Fedotenko-Johnson line, the Penguins first two lines, in all their various combinations, were really quiet tonight.
-We know Dan Bylsma will never blame injuries, but you could tell the mixing and matching of some line combinations, as forced by injuries, threw his team off a bit tonight.
-There wasn't a great deal of physical play for either team, but there were "selective" hits. Neither team really played with reckless abandon, but they were picky when they threw checks.
-It might be time for the great Martin Skoula experiment to come to a close. He has seemingly had one notable gaffe in each of his games for the past month or so. Surely Ben Lovejoy or Deryk Engelland can fill his role.
-We thought Letang had a pretty strong game once again. It almost as if he has stepped things up in the absence of Alex Goligoski.
-The Penguins ended up with a 31-28 lead in shots.
-Spezza, Malkin and Eaton (Huh?) each led the game with five.
-Gonchar led the game with 25:56 of ice time.
-Phillips led the Senators with 24:12.
-The Penguins had a 34-32 edge in faceoffs (52 percent).
-Adams was 5 for 6 (83 percent).
-Fisher was 14 for 21 (67 percent).
-Here's a shocker. Anton Volchenkov led the game with five blocked shots.
-Gonchar and McKee each led the Penguins with three.
-Jordan Staal appeared in his 300th career regular season game.
-Fleury recorded his 100th career regulation loss. Congrats!
-Johnson recorded his first career NHL assists.
-Fedotenko moved ahead of Mike Corrigan and Barry Wilkins for 116th place on the team's all-time scoring. All three players have 61 points but Fedotenko (24) has more goals than Corrigan (22) or Wilkins (5).