Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 by Adam Wagner
Hossa leads Pens to victory
The trade for Marian Hossa looks better and better for the Penguins with each passing game, even as talk show hosts keep asking whether fans would rather keep Hossa or various young players on the air. As he showed again on Tuesday night, though, Hossa is becoming a dominant playoff player.
Hossa’s first goal, which was the second of the game, was very pretty as he faked out one defenseman, then shot the puck through another defender’s legs where it then went over Marty Biron’s left pad and into the net. That Hossa had the bravery to take the shot shows just how confident he is about his game right now and that confidence is clearly translating into his play all over the ice as he is hitting harder, skating faster and scoring better than almost anyone could have expected considering his playoff history.
The other impressive goal was Ryan Malone’s, which came about halfway through the third period, effectively putting the game away. Malone has been a revelation this season, playing nearly at the level of an elite power forward and his goal proved that as he got the puck in front of Biron, played with it a little bit, and then simply put it into the net to put the Penguins ahead 3-1.
The first goal of the game was Ryan Whitney’s, which took a lucky bounce off of a defender before going into the back of the net. The fourth goal was a Hossa snipe on an empty net that shut up the Philly fans for good.
The only Flyers goal of the night came on a complete breakdown as four Penguins converged on the puck as it crossed into the zone, then they all backed off, leaving an open path to the goal and allowing R.J. Umberger to score. Those type of breakdowns just can’t happen if the Penguins expect to shut down Detroit and their deep corp of forwards. (Marc-Andre Fleury was very solid, as per usual.)
The Flyers seemed to be taking liberties for most of tonight’s game as Petr Sykora was the victim of an especially nasty hit in the third period when he was blindsided just as Malone was scoring. The Penguins may need to become even more physical than they have been in order to impose another type of authority on the thus far outshot, outskated and flatout outplayed Flyers.
This series should end on Thursday and the Detroit Red Wings should be awaiting the Pens in the Stanley Cup Finals.
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