It's a Winning Streak! Pens win 2-1!

Main Storylines:

- Kris Letang skated with the team this morning and may even return before the All-Star break before the end of the month

- Sidney Crosby has decided to see Dr. Carrick again to work on his balance and movement issues.

- The Pens enter tonight on a 2 game winning streak and in 8^th place in the Conference

Result:

Pens 2  Canes 1  (SO)

Goals:  Malkin (22) from Niskanen, Martin

SO Winner: Neal

Geno = Cam Ward's Boogeyman

 The Good:

- Tyler Kennedy played in his 300^th career game and Paul Martin recorded his 200^th career point

- The Pens did a great job keeping up with a very up-tempo Hurricanes team.  They had issues against Toronto and Carolina earlier in the season in similar games.

- The team got a lot of pucks to the net again, amassing over 40 shots and attempting over 60

- The forechecking was great, especially from Vitale, Dupuis, and Kennedy.

- The PK was a strong 3 for 3, not allowing many chances at all.  Cooke and Michalek had a fantastic game for the unit.

- 3^rd win in a row!!

Evgeni Malkin – Single-handedly tied the game with a beautiful effort, stealing the puck off of Eric Staal and roofing a shot over Cam Ward on the short side.  He was all over the ice in this game and played strong in all 3 zones.  He added a beautiful goal in the shootout as well.

Marc-Andre Fleury – Was a rock in net and made the game look easy tonight, making 25 saves on 26 shots.

The Bad:

- The penalty call on Orpik hitting Skinner was atrocious.  Completely clean hit, point of contact with the shoulder, and Skinner had touched the puck.  The ref apologized to Orpik before the shootout after seeing a replay

- The statisticians?  How on earth Niskanen and Martin got assists on Geno’s goal is beyond me.  Malkin got the puck off of Staal and did it all on his own

- Not being able to see Engelland fight Gleason live since Root Sports had cut away for a commercial at that point.  Yes, it was a slow developing fight, but perhaps they should use a little more discretion.

At least there are pictures so I can see it happened.

- The Pens got dominated in the faceoff circle for the 3^rd straight game (apparently this doesn’t affect winning at all right now), which is a rarity at home

Paul Martin – Martin had a nice trifecta of turning the puck over on the Canes only goal, missing a wide open net, and taking an ill-advised tripping penalty.  He had a pretty strong game other than that…but yeah, that’s a lot.

The Ugly:

- Seeing Skinner laying on the ice.  He came back to play, so hopefully he has no lingering effects, but you hate to see a player go down like that when returning from a concussion.

Hopefully he doesn't react poorly tomorrow morning like Letang did

  

Thoughts:

- All 5 teams in the Atlantic Division won tonight, so the Pens will have to keep it up against the Rangers on Thursday to gain some ground.

- I don’t necessarily equate fighting directly to wins or effort, but it has been a strong gauge of how intensely the Pens have played the last 3 games.  Every game has been hard-hitting and chippy, which was missing during that 6 game losing streak.

- Evgeni Malkin is seriously on another level right now.  You can tell how confident he is with the puck and his patience has increased dramatically when he is carrying it.  The comfort level between him and Neal has made a world of difference over the past week for the whole team.

Pens Record: 24-17-4, 52 pts, 4^th in the Atlantic, 7^th in the East

Next Game:  1/19 @ NYR, 7pm