Late Malkin goal gives series opener to Pens

Penguins lead series 1-0 over Rangers

Everything seemed to be going the Rangers’ way in the opening game of their Eastern Conference Semifinal series against Pittsburgh on Friday night at Mellon Arena. The Blueshirts had built up a commanding lead by the game’s midpoint and then managed to battle back into a tie after Pittsburgh has surged ahead.

Then, all that positive momentum suddenly turned in the Penguins’ direction, as a late interference penalty against Martin Straka set the stage for a video-review-approved game-winning goal by Evgeni Malkin, which gave Pittsburgh a 5-4 win and a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

Game 2 will take place on Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh before the series comes to Madison Square Garden for Games 3 and 4 on Tuesday and Thursday.

Friday night’s winning goal came with only 1:41 remaining in the third period of a wild, back-and-forth game that had seen a Rangers 3-0 lead become a 4-3 deficit before Scott Gomez tied the game with just under 10 minutes remaining.

“Pittsburgh isn’t where they’re at because they’re a poor team and they don’t know how to bounce back,” said Rangers head coach Tom Renney. “We were certainly aware of that –almost to a fault.”

Overtime had seemed imminent right until Pittsburgh’s Marian Hossa was sprung on a potential 2-on-1 with Penguins star Sidney Crosby in the neutral zone. Straka was whistled for interference against Crosby, and the Penguins went to work on a power play at 16:40.

With only 21 seconds left in that man-advantage, Crosby picked received a pass along the right-wing boards just inside the blue line and ripped a shot that deflected off Malkin’s shin and past Lundqvist for the game-winner.

The Malkin goal required a video review, because some angles appeared to indicate that the high-scoring center might have intentionally kicked the puck into the Rangers net. Upon review, however, officials ruled that the puck had deflected in without any deliberate kicking motion on Malkin’s part, and the goal stood.

“I saw it was going wide and I reached for it and it hit Malkin’s leg and went in,” said Lundqvist. “We just have to forget this. I don’t want to think about it, I just want to move on.”

The Rangers made a furious attempt to tie the game in its waning seconds, and they came close with goaltender Henrik Lundqvist out of the net for an extra attacker. Only 10 seconds remained when Rangers captain Jaromir Jagr flicked a wrist shot that beat Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury but rattled off the left post. Straka, who was trailing the play was unable to catch up to the rebound in time before a Pittsburgh defender cleared it to safety.

“That one hurts. I thought we had it,” Rangers captain Jaromir Jagr said. “The second (game) is going to be even tougher, but we have to do it somehow.”

The final score overshadowed a strong performance by Lundqvist, who made 21 saves and allowed most of his goals on unstoppable or unfortunate deflections.

Leading 3-2 after two periods, the Rangers slipped into a 3-3 tie at 4:40 of the third, when Hossa took a return pass from defenseman Rob Scuderi at the base of the right circle and banked a shot in off Gomez. That was one of three Penguins goals that deflected off something other than a player’s stick before finding the net on Friday night.

Only 20 seconds after the Hossa goal, the Pens took their first lead when Malkin broke in behind the Rangers defense, moved to the top of the crease and fed a perfect pass across the front of the net to Petr Sykora, who deposited it behind Lundqvist to put the home team up 4-3.

At that point, however, the game was still young. Not long after Lundqvist made a tremendous save on Sykora at 9:15, Gomez drew the Rangers back into a tie and broke up Pittsburgh’s momentum at 10:04 of the third period by blasting a shot into the top right corner from the base of the left faceoff circle.

Veteran leadership proved to be the difference on Gomez’s goal, as Jagr chased down a loose puck behind the net and sent a pass back toward the slot. Straka then had the presence of mind to let the puck go past him to a hard-charging Gomez, who had managed to free himself in the left circle.

Only 21 seconds after Gomez scored, Lundqvist came up with another huge 1-on-1 save against Crosby who had kicked the puck onto his own skate in the slot, but was left with no good angle to target. Crosby, however, would eventually get his revenge in drawing the penalty that led to his assist on the winning goal.

Earlier in the game, it was hard to imagine the eventual ending. The first period proved just how valuable the Rangers’ edge in playoff experience would be, as the Blueshirts weathered Pittsburgh’s shock-and-awe offense over the first 10 minutes and eventually took the lead on a power-play goal by Straka.

With their very loud crowd — dressed in white giveaway T-shirts — enthusiastically behind them, the Pens came out flying to start the game and had pumped eight shots at Lundqvist before the Rangers finally found their own rhythm.

Indeed, Lundqvist’s performance during that initial stretch saved the game for the Rangers and enabled them to eventually settle down and begin to dictate play.

Pittsburgh’s blitzkrieg offensive approach got an early boost when Jagr was sent off for cross-checking Sergei Gonchar just 23 seconds into the game. Given an opportunity to flex their power-play muscle, the Pens were poised to pounce, but instead Lundqvist used the Penguins man-advantage to let Pittsburgh’s stars know he was going to be a big factor in the series.

Lundqvist made his noteworthy save when he denied Ryan Malone in front after Malone had taken a perfect centering pass from Crosby and was all alone outside the crease at 1:25. Ironically, a similar play originating out of the left corner would later lead to the Rangers’ first-period goal.

The Penguins managed four other shots at Lundqvist during their early power play, and they kept the puck in the Rangers’ zone for much of the two minutes. Lundqvist, meanwhile, kept the Rangers in the game shortly after the penalty ended when he made two tremendous stops against Malkin and Sykora, who both had chances from the slot. The first eye-popping save came against Malkin at 4:34 and the second against Sykora five seconds later.

Lundqvist had a total of seven saves before six minutes had elapsed, and he had to make another big one against Tyler Kennedy’s deflection of Gonchar’s blast from the right point at 6:43. Five seconds after that save, the Rangers found themselves forced to kill another penalty when Christian Backman went off for interference.

The Rangers did an expert job of killing the Backman penalty, and second after it expired, they managed their first two shots on goal — a wrister from Brandon Dubinsky at 8:45, which was quickly followed by a Dan Girardi backhander.

Fleury turned those shots aside, but the tide seemed to have turned in the Rangers favor, as the Blueshirts would go on to outshoot Pittsburgh 5-1 over the rest of the period.

The Rangers got their first chance to work with a man-advantage at 13:11 of the opening period, when Pittsburgh’s Ryan Whitney was sent off for high-sticking Ryan Callahan in the offensive zone, and it didn’t take long for Straka to make them pay.

The Blueshirts needed only 29 seconds to cash in on the penalty, as Straka’s centering pass to Dubinsky from the right corner caught a piece of Gonchar’s skate and deflected underneath Fleury. Straka’s pass had been headed right for Dubinsky’s tape as the rookie crashed into the crease. Michal Rozsival assisted on the play, which was only the Rangers’ fourth shot of the period after Lundqvist had already made nine saves.

Straka’s tally put the Penguins in a one-goal deficit for only the second time in the playoffs. Ottawa had briefly held a 1-0 lead in one of the four games Pittsburgh swept in Round 1.

The Rangers got another chance to work on the power play late in the first period when Sykora took a hooking penalty for pulling down Marc Staal between the circles in the Pittsburgh zone. The Blueshirts applied heavy pressure, for just over a minute until an interference call against Brendan Shanahan brought the teams back to even strength at 4-on-4.

Pittsburgh went right back to its blitz approach in the second period. Just 12 seconds after the opening faceoff and with only 13 remaining in a power play that carried over from the first period, Crosby gained control in the offensive zone and passed off to Hossa, who sent Lundqvist sprawling to make the save.

Just as they had before their goal in the opening period, the Rangers again capitalized on Pittsburgh’s missed opportunity when Chris Drury scored on a deflection of a Staal blast from the left point at 1:52. Drury expertly picked Staal’s shot out of mid-air in the high slot and sent it angling downward toward the crease, where it slid past Fleury for a 2-0 lead.

Drury’s goal required a lengthy video review to determine if his stick had been above shoulder-level at the time he made contact with the puck. While review showed that Drury initially did set up for his deflection with a high stick, his downward motion on the actual deflection made it a legitimate Rangers goal.

The successful deflection put Pittsburgh in a two-goal hole for the first time in the 2008 playoffs, and that deficit would grow even larger within moments.

Only 105 seconds after the Drury goal, it was a 3-0 lead for the Rangers, courtesy of a heads-up play by Sean Avery, who bulled into the offensive zone and flicked a quick shot from the right circle past Fleury and into the far side of the net at 3:37. That goal, Avery’s fourth of the playoffs, deflated the crowd, as the Rangers managed to do in the opening four minutes of the second period what the Pens had been unable to do early in the first.

“We scored two quick ones and they scored two quick ones. It was like every goal that was scored was always doubled,” said Jagr. ‘It was tough. Tough bounces for us and for them.”

Staal, the game’s No. 3 star, assisted on Avery’s goal for his second helper of the period. He now has three points, including a game-winning goal in his first Stanley Cup playoffs.

“(Ahead) 3-0 in the playoffs, you’d like to think it’s over, but what are you going to do?” Gomez said. “We can’t get in a track meet with those guys. It’s over, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Down by three goals, the Pens got their first score at 8:13 of the second period, when Jarkko Ruutu’s centering pass from the left side caught defenseman Michal Rozsival’s leg and bounced into the net.

It was suddenly a 3-2 game after Pascal Dupuis took a pass from Crosby in the left circle and rifled a shot past Lundqvist at 8:27. The goal, which resulted from an outstanding individual play by Crosby behind the net to Lundqvist’s right, brought the crowd back to life and got the Pens revved up for a big offensive surge that opened up the whole game.

The Blueshirts managed to stifle that momentum when Blair Betts drew a slashing penalty on Brooks Orpik as Betts broke in down the slot on a 2-on-1 at 11:09. The Rangers got a golden scoring chance with eight seconds left in their power play when Rozsival fed Backman just outside the crease to Fleury’s right, but Fleury came up with his biggest save to that point in the game

Lundqvist answered Fleury’s stop with a gem of his own at 14:12, denying Sykora on a 2-on-1 after the former Rangers winger took a pass from Crosby in the slot.

Pittsburgh got a late power-play at 15:55 when Dubinsky went off for a tripping call against Crosby, but the Rangers were up to the challenge. Pittsburgh failed to get a shot on net during the power-play, and the Blueshirts caught a break shortly after it expired when Sykora hit the right post with a drive from the left circle. That misfortune, however, would be repaid with 10 seconds remaining when Jagr ran into a similar obstacle on the other side of the same net.

“Sunday’s another game,” said Straka. “You’ve just got to put it behind you today and tomorrow have a good practice and be ready on Sunday.”

Source: Rangers Official Website