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Game 1 is in the Books!!
By Bethany | May 25, 2008
x-posted to The Sports Diva Magazine
Wow, that game, in my opinion lived up to everything I had thought it was going to be. Maybe that’s because I am cheering for the Wings…then again who knows. The Penguins had every opportunity to score. They had four power plays in a row, all of which they were unable to capitalize on. The Detroit Red Wings scored first but the goal was waved off, because Tomas Holmstrom was by the net, Homer then got a penalty, and sat for 2 minutes.
Mikael Samuelsson opened the scoring and it was all downhill from there for the Pittsburgh Penguins. This marks the first time this postseason that the Pittsburgh Penguins have trailed in a series. Penguins coach, Michel Therrien had this to say about the game,
“I don’t know if it was nerves, but definitely that was the worst performance of the playoffs. We didn’t compete like were supposed to compete. And it’s a good lesson.”
The Penguins started off well, they were competing, at the beginning, but then something happened, (that something would be Samuelsson scoring) and they stopped, it was like they had no idea what to do with themselves.
The Red Wings shut down Crosby, Malkin, and Staal pretty easily. They had a few good chances but Chris Osgood was able to shutdown the Pens by only making 19 saves on the night. I think of all the articles I have read on this game, my favorite quote is from Scotty Bowman talking about the Malkin matchups,
“We were talking about it with Babcock, and he said what he wanted to do with Malkin was give him some offence with [Valterri] Filppula and [Jiri] Hudler, and then give him some checking with [Kris] Draper, [Dallas] Drake and [Mikael] Samuelsson,” Bowman said. “Give him some variety, you know? He had some good matchups tonight. Babcock did a good job in that one.”
I think that is why the Red Wings are so good. You never know what you’re going to be up against.
Here is what I think needs to be done for game 2. The Red Wings will obviously keep things the same. The Penguins need to work on their puck possession and Marc Andre Fleury has got to be better. It will be very interesting to see how the Penguins deal with this loss. I am still saying Detroit in 6!!
Topics: Stanley Cup Playoffs, Stanley Cup Finals, Pittsburgh Penguins, Detroit Red Wings |
May 25th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
[…] Original post here […]
May 25th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
wow, that game. I caught the first bit, then the last bit. Wasn’t surprised. I was hoping for a little more out of the Pens- personally I don’t care who wins, well yeah I kinda wanted to see the Pens win. Not sure why.
Hopefully they now know what they are up against now and come ready to play on Monday.
Scratching my head there at the end, is this the same team that I saw the CBJ beat more than once this season?? How is that even possible?
May 26th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
I was expecting more from the Pens too, but I had a great time watching it. LOL, if the CBJ could figure out how to beat the bad teams, then we would be in good shape, but they haven’t quite got that down yet. We were a bit better this year though.
May 27th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
[…] Game 1 is in the Books!! […]