Pens End the Regular Season with a Win

Main Storylines:

- While this is a “meaningless game”, quite a few players are looking for milestones.  Most importantly, the Flyers have yet to lose in Consol in heading into the last game of the season.

- These teams are locked into the 4/5 matchup.  Don’t expect too much craziness because they both know next week is far more important than anything today.

- While this is a playoff preview, it also isn’t.  Flyers aren’t dressing Giroux, Briere, and Grossmann.  Pens aren’t dressing Neal, Sullivan, Niskanen.

Result:

Pens  4  Flyers  2

Goals:  Dupuis (25) from Asham, Staal

            Kunitz (26) from Malkin

            Crosby (8) (PP) from Kunitz, Staal

            Malkin (50) from Letang, Crosby

Stats/Milestones:

- Goals: Dupuis (25), Kunitz (26), Malkin (50)

Just an unreal season for Dupuis, what a stud.

- Point Streak: Dupuis (17 games)

- Points Malkin (109), Staal (50), Dupuis (59), Kunitz (61)

- Evgeni Malkin will officially win the Art Ross Trophy for finishing as the league’s leading scorer.

Not quite how I want him celebrating #50, but better than Neal's #40 celebration.

- The crowd set a new record at Consol Energy Center, packing in 18,616 to see the season finale.

The Good:

- The refs did a fantastic job in this game.  Everyone was worried about what shenanigans may occur, but after an early fight between Joe Vitale and Harry Zolnierczyk, nothing dirty or gritty occurred.  The refs called a pretty tight game and even gave Shelley a 10 minute misconduct before he could get in any real trouble or take a penalty.  I expect that type of reffing all series.

Oh yeah, and Vitale won, by a landslide.

- The defense was the best I have seen in weeks, though obviously not going against Giroux or Briere helped a bit.  Michalek and Letang played exceptionally well, both making some great diving breakups and stops.

The Bad:

- I will be quite happy to see the end of the Engelland/Strait pairing.  Mostly on Strait’s part.  I don’t believe he’s nearly as ready as the Pens seem to, as I would prefer Despres over him right now.  The Schenn goal was on account of a lack of communication between Engo and Strait as neither knew who should go into the high slot to cover him.  Strait is a little too untethered in his coverage for my liking right now.  Hopefully Niskanen will be healthy and ready as the playoffs start.

- The powerplay did score a goal, but looked awful on their 5 minute major chance.  I will let this slide because they were trying to feed Malkin constantly and were also without Sullivan and Neal, but it still goes under bad for this game.

- It was sad to see Fleury get pulled on the verge of franchise record breaking win #227 just to see Johnson allow a goal instantly to give Fleury a no decision.  Fleury looked visibly displeased on the jumbotron, but hey, a game plan is a game plan.  Just have to wait til next year flower!

Johnson went straight to Fleury and shook his head in apology after the game.

The Ugly:

- Zac Rinaldo took a 5 minute major for checking from behind and a game misconduct when he crushed Michalek into the boards from behind.  I honestly believe half of this penalty was because of the refs wanting to keep control of the game and because his last name was Rinaldo.  He received a warning earlier in the shift from a ref after hitting Kennedy and was promptly thrown out after that hit.  The refs clearly wanted to take control and I approve of them acting in that way towards both teams.

Thoughts:

- Here are your East matchups: NYR – Ott, Bos – Was, Fla – NJ, Pit – Phi….guess who has the winning records in each series?  Not who you expect: Ott, Was, Fla, Phi.

- The 3^rd period was clearly both teams dropping into a stance of, let’s not get hurt, let’s not get into trouble, we’ll settle everything over the next 2 weeks.  Props to both teams for being smart with that.

- Though this was a meaningless game, I believe it was HUGE to beat the Flyers in Consol so they couldn’t go into the playoff series with that over our heads.  They will rationalize it based on the players they were missing, but the result does not change, it was a big psyche win whether anyone admits it or not.

- I’ll save the rest for future posts in the next few days, I PLAN on doing a Regular Season Review, Flyers Roster Preview, and Pens-Flyers Series Preview before the playoffs get underway…we’ll see how much I can accomplish.  Thanks for reading!

Pens Record: 51-25-6, 108 pts, 2^nd in the Atlantic, 4^th in the East

Next Game:  TBD, Playoffs announced Sunday, 4/8 at 1pm.  Likely 1^st 4 games: Wed, Fri, Sun, Wed