Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 by Adam Wagner
You Mean They Play Winning Hockey in Pittsburgh?
Marc-Andre Fleury sparkled again Monday night, leading the Penguins to a 1-0 win over the New York Rangers that neither team seemed to really want. Fleury built off of his performance in Washington Saturday, stopping 36 shots and not losing focus to help his team gain two valuable points over its divisional foes.
Fleury is possibly gaining some modicum of consistency, as he has maintained his focus the past two games, not only making the spectacular save but also not letting the easy goal in. In this game, for instance, Fleury could have become upset that his team was being severely outshot (the final margin was 36-21 in favor of NY), but he bore down and simply won the hockey game.
In the first period, the teams traded penalties, with neither team capitalizing on opportunities. The Penguins, for instance, had three or four chances on one power play, but were unable to capitalize on any of them. Part of this was due to the very good play of Henrik Lundqvist, but both teams were giving up opportunities and ringing shots off of posts all night.
The Penguins nearly let the Rangers back into the game late in the third when they were whistled for a too many men on the ice penalty that nearly proved costly, but they were able to kill it off and maintain the lead.
In the end, it was Evgeni Malkin and Fleury who made the difference, with Malkin scoring the only goal of the game on a power play 44 seconds into the second period and the Penguins’ defense and Fleury doing the job from there.
This is now a three game winning streak for the Pens’ and with home games against Toronto and Montreal coming up, the 5-3 Penguins have a legitimate chance to leave Original Six week with a 7-3 record.
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