Pens Lose, Ruin My Prediction

Thursday was a busy night in the Pittsburgh sports world. At 6 PM, the future of the Penguins was being discussed in Philadelphia, of all places. At 7:30, the Penguins players took the ice and tried to take care of business against the New Jersey Devils. At 9:30, the Pitt Panthers were tipping off their first game in the Big East tournament against nemesis Marquette. And at approximately 10:08, the Pens were ready for their shootout, ruining my prediction of a 10:30 shootout start time.

For those of you scoring at home, four of the last five Pens games have gone into a shootout. Unfortunately, their streak of seven consecutive shootout wins came to an end on this night, as the Devils topped the Pens, 4-3.

The Penguins beat Martin Brodeur three times, which is pretty solid work by anyone's standards. They had a power play goal courtesy of Evgeni Malkin, a shorthander by Sergei Gonchar, and their only non-Russian goal of the evening, a game-tying slapshot by Michel Ouellet.

But the Devils ruled the shootout, as Brodeur stopped the red-hot Erik Christensen, Malkin, and Sidney Crosby in succession. Patrik Elias scored on the final shot to send a crowd of 17,132 Pens fanatics home disappointed.

The Pens resume their quest for the postseason on Saturday afternoon at 1 PM against Jaromir Jagr and the Rangers. The shootout starts at 4:09.

Other notes from this evening's broadcast:

-Here's the info and picture of the Marvel character "Gronk", which is the nickname of Jordan Staal. Oh, you silly kids.

-Great interview of Marc-Andre Fleury by Dan Potash. I have yet to see or hear a Fleury interview where he didn't smile or laugh the entire time. The best part was the location of the interview, which was in front of a Coke machine. We now know that Mark Recchi drinks bottled water and feels the need to walk into another guy's interview.

-A neat feature on the Pirates who recently broke away from camp and attended the Penguins' game. Sanchez, Bay, Nady, Duke...they're all fans. Then they interviewed a heavy-set guy who didn't resemble an athlete at all. I thought they might have mixed up their tape. And then they ID'd the person as Pirate reliever Matt Capps.