Scoring first not recommended

Watched the tail end of the Penguins/Blue Jackets game tonight.  When I turned it on, the Jackets were still down 3-2 after allowing three goals in twelve minutes in the first period.  But they had been battling back, since.

Well, it took them several minutes to mount a chance at all (including killing a penalty), but they had several chances in the last few minutes.

But they weren't able to break through until the final minute of regulation, when Fleury went to play the puck behind his net, fumbled it away, and watched it passed in front and shot in before he could get back into position.  It was a terrible capstone to a pretty good game for him.

And that sent it into overtime.  For the first half a minute or so, the Jackets went right at the Penguins, and had several chances.  Then the Penguins came back, and had a few chances of their own.

But one of those chances was stopped by a Blue Jacket stopping a shot.  It was pushed to neutral, the blocker (Umberger, I think) threw the puck back across to Foligno, who broke into the zone and shot it low, right at Fleury.  And he was rewarded when Flower went Power-less to tie the series.

That leaves the series tied (with the team scoring first giving up their lead in every game, and losing in three of the four).  If that late-game failure gets into Fleury's head at all, I have to wonder if he's going to look like he did in the playoffs the last two seasons.  That would amuse me no end, but we'll have to wait and see.  I think I'd bet against it, but I'm hopeful.

Go Jackets!

Hockey night (not) in Canada

I turned on the hockey game tonight, hoping to see if the Habs lost their minds again vs the Sens, but it wasn't on at all.  Just the Pens and Isles, which is probably the last series I actually want to watch.

But I was stuck with it, so I left it on for a while.  Long enough to see the Islanders outplaying the Pens pretty seriously, and to take a 1-0 lead in the first.  Between periods, I had to turn the game off (had to distract my son for a while), and didn't get back to it until I put the kids to bed.

So I turned it on with a couple minutes left, and was thrilled to see the Isles were still up by a goal (less so that the Pens had scored four in the intervening time, but you take what you can get).  Even better, just after I turned it on, the Isles stopped the Pens just past the blue line, quickly moved it up-ice, and Cizikas put a weak shot off of Fleury's hand (it was an atrocious attempt at a save, on a shot that wasn't even on-net) and into the net.  I'm thinking TVo will be starting for Pittsburgh next time.

The Islanders just played defense to their raucous crowd after that, and kept the Penguins from getting close to scoring.  Glorious.

After their initial shut-out, and doubly so when I heard Crosby was coming back for Game 2, I was quite willing to write off the series (actually, I was almost ready to write it off before it started).  But the Islanders have outplayed the Pens three games in a row now, so they might be able to pull off the huge upset.  I'm hoping.