James Neal, Useless No Longer -- Penguins Win OT Thriller in Tampa

One of my best friends dubbed James Neal "useless" about 10 games into his career with the Penguins. As in James Useless Neal. I, too, was disappointed in the guy. At first he seemed weak, easily taken off his line and he checked with utter indifference. Plus, he didn't score. In fact, he seemed to get flustered around the net, to hesitate a moment too long before shooting, to just not have the quick hands and killer instinct you want from a goal scorer.

Over time, he developed the other parts of his game -- he uses his size to his advantage, finishes his checks, and establishes position. In short, he has become a great overall player and through the first four games of the post-season, he has been the most physical presence on the ice not named Brooks Orpik.

But fans, myself included, want Neal to score. And I'm fairly certain that Ray Shero traded Alex Goligoski to the Stars to get Neal (and Matt Niskanen), because Neal is a scoring winger. Heck, the Penguins -- in the absence of Sid and Geno -- have a ton of guys who are great role players, but not pure scorers. I believe Neal has been pressing around the net, gripping his stick with a vulcan death grip and his desire to score has been counter-productive. The other parts of his game are nice, but we want goals -- big, fat, juicy, game winning goals. And he knows that.

Last night's wrister from the boards that whizzed past an unsuspecting Dwayne Roloson might be just the medicine Neal needs to go on a tear. I actually believe that the dam has burst and we'll see more production from him in terms of points. He is a man who looks like the weight of the world has just been lifted from his shoulders. That's got to be good for his game.

Other random thoughts about this playoff series:

At this time of year, in fact at all times of the year, the outcome of games seems to come down to Marc-Andre Fleury. The team feeds off Fleury, particularly without Sid out there leading the way. When Flower gets off to a good start, makes a great save early, they all feed off of it and get stronger as a result. When he has a shaky start (like Friday night), instead of rising up to give their goalie a lift, they all falter. You can pretty much tell how a game is going to go within the first five minutes of the first period, just by watching Flower. Here's hoping he's a brick wall in net at noon on Saturday, so the Pens can put these guys away and move on.


I saw a stat on FoxSports, er, excuse me Root Sports the other night that Brooks Orpik averages about 2.7 hits per game in the regular season, but he averages somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.8 hits per game in the post-season. How fantastic is that?


Dear Tampa Bay,
Get as loud as you want. We love it.
Sincerely,
Max Talbot
Max is a big time player. The Penguins, I would point out, are 11-1 in the post-season when Max has a goal. The guy has the Midas touch.


Has anybody had a bigger series than Arron Asham? Like Talbot, he has a freaky ability to raise his game in the post-season. I think this is precisely why Shero brought him on board. He has three huge goals in this series and constantly goes to net with authority.


Oh wait, I thought of somebody who has had a bigger series than Asham -- Martin St. Louis. He has six points in four games and has single-handedly kept the Lightning in games. Every time I see #26 on the ice for Tampa, my blood pressure spikes. Even though everybody in the building knows that St. Louis is the Bolts best chance to win, he still gets loose around the net. He's got amazing speed, tremendous hands and is maybe the most elusive player in the NHL. If that guy wasn't playing in Tampa, if he played for a Canadian team or in a city like Pittsburgh or Detroit, he'd be a rock star, mentioned in the same breath with Sid and Ovie, Pavel Datsyuk and Daniel Sedin.


At some point today, I will write several love sonnets to Zbynek Michalek. What rhymes with 'cleaner?' Does anybody remember the rules of iambic pentameter?


Steven Stamkos' stat line for this series -- 4 games, 5 shots on goal, 0 goals, 1 assist, and a minus-1 rating. Last night, he didn't even get a single shot on Fleury, that's how much the Pens defense has taken him out of this series. Welcome to the post-season, kid.


Was it just me or did those little drums they passed out to the fans in Tampa Bay on Monday night sound like vuvuzelas? Man, that is a sound I so did not miss. Perhaps there were rogue FIFA vuvuzelas in the house? In addition to the silly drums, that is.

Fleury Leads the Way in Game 1, Pens Best Lightning

A handful of years ago, before the Penguins 2008-2009 Stanley Cup Victory, fans were whining and carping about Marc-Andre Fleury -- that he wasn't any good, that he'd never be any good and that the organization should ship away the overall No. 1 pick from the 2003 draft. Okay, not all fans, but there was a vocal group, a minority I hoped, who were foolishly impatient and virulently anti-Fleury. I still hear grumbles from time to time from some fringe wing-nuts about Fleury, but mostly I ignore them because you can never try to bring reason to a sports argument with an idiot.

I have this theory about hockey and I may be just as full of it as the Flower-bashers, but the theory goes: the closer you play to the net, the longer it takes to mature, the longer it takes to get to your game, as it were. A winger or centerman can come in and be good right away. Not that he'll have a complete game, mind you, but the positives he brings to the ice are so apparent that everybody forgives a couple of holes in his game. This is especially true with hockey-savants like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal, but even for ordinary talents, you can see their upside more readily than you can in a defenseman or goalie.

As to the defensemen, again, I'm going to stick with a Pittsburgh example -- Rob Scuderi. There was a season (2005-2006, I think) when I actually audibly groaned whenever Scuds took the ice. I had very few nice things to say about him. His game was painful to watch sometimes, but he kept chipping away at his game, kept improving in little ways, ways that probably only he and his teammates and coaches could see at first. He learned how to play his position, how to position his body to best help Fleury, how to maneuver incoming snipers off of their preferred lines of approach, how to work in tandem with the other defender, how to time throwing his body in front of pucks. By the time the Penguins made it to their first Stanley Cup Finals appearance following the 2007-2008 season, Scuds and Brooks Orpik were the team's best pure defensemen. A year later, when the team actually won the Stanley Cup, nobody was bigger on the back end than Rob Scuderi.

And if it felt like we had to be patient with Scuds, even more patience is needed with a brilliant net-minder. As good as Fleury was when the Penguins won the Stanley Cup, he's been even better this year. Last night, through a first period when the Lightning tilted the ice in his direction (at a pretty steep slope mind you), Flower stood tall and withstood the marauding hordes.

There were so many Tampa players in Fleury's personal space, it looked like the Lightning called a team meeting in the crease. But he denied them time and again, managing to swat pucks away that he couldn't get a bead on, blocking pucks with his ass, blocking them with the back of his knee, pulling pucks out of the air like a left-fielder, smiting all 14 shots on net that came his way in the first period.

That's not to say he didn't play a brilliant game for all 60 minutes, but the Penguins got to their game in the second period (as coach Bylsma likes to say), putting the pressure on Roloson, getting out in transition quickly, not allowing multiple rushes at Fleury, but limiting the chances per possession.

So many players contributed. Brooks Orpik, I believe, got in Steven Stamkos' head when he crushed him on the very first shift of the game. Stamkos only got one shot on net and only attempted four shots total. Call it the Orpik Effect.

James Neal was likewise finishing people off all over the ice, then made a spectacular pass to Alex Kovalev to finally break the scoreless tie.

Seconds later, Arron Asham got a great goal that was the fruit of sticking to the puck like white on rice.

You don't win a playoff game without a holistic team effort, but nobody stood taller than the Flower in Game 1.






[All photos courtesy of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review]

Penguins Power Play Key

Every team has holes to fill, every team goes into each new season with questions. Penguins fans wondered, who was going to play on the wing with Sid? Frankly, that seems to be a question every year and Mike Comrie was supposed to be the answer there, but, meh, not so much. (More on that in another post.)

Then there was the question of how and where Arron Asham might fit in? Turns out, of late he's fit quite nicely next to Evgeni Malkin.

There were questions about how they would replace the solid defense of Mark Eaton (not to mention and Rob Scuderi, who I don't think has been adequately replaced since he left after winning the Cup.)

Just when, oh when, would we get the magnificent Jordan Staal back?

And of course, we all wondered if Flower would return to 2008-2009 magnificence? Or be the hot, erratic post-Olympic mess he was in the spring of 2010? That's still unanswered, really.

There were questions. Questions, questions everywhere.

But the big fat elephant at center ice for the Penguins was, in the absence of Sergei Gonchar, just who would quarterback the power play?

So far, the answer is nobody which might account for the fact that I actually groan when the Pens go on the power play. In the words of noted hockey fan Harvey Fierstein, is that so wrong?

A couple of years ago, we watched Geno quarterback the PP and that was P.U. Not wanting to revisit that ineptitude, they did the obvious and plugged in Gonchar's wingman on the PP, Alex Gologoski. Despite Gogo's obvious shooting ability, my buddy the UConn Fan astutely pointed out that dude just thinks way too much at the point and by the time he figures out what he wants to do, the defense has completely adjusted. You know, now that I think about it, rather than groaning, I should run a quick lap from the living room to the dining room to the kitchen, and then reverse my course and do it again, because when I'm done with that, the Pens power play should be set up in the offensive zone. It takes them at least 30 second, sometimes closer to a full minute - an eternity in hockey time - to set up.

Sometimes, I watch other teams and within 15 seconds of the power play starting, they've buried the puck in the back of the net. It looks so easy. They make it look fun, even. Power plays can be fun? Who knew. May god have mercy on my immortal soul, but the Flyers and the Capitals make it look like child's play.

But not our Pens, who convert on the PP only 13% of the time, good for 24th out of 30. I could understand how you might think the power play unit ranked 31st out of 30 if you have been watching them squander 80 out of their 92 opportunities. [That 92 power play chances? Is first in the league by a mile, which makes it even more painful somehow.]

But the problems with the power play go deeper, much deeper than the points they're leaving out there. Its like their special teams futility weighs on them, weighs them down, putting subsequent shifts in a funk, a malaise. Their inability to score -- heck, their inability to even generate scoring chances -- is killing them in all areas. The way they get a lift from a successful penalty kill, they get a comparable drag from failure on the power play.

Rumbles are that Dan Bylsma is going to deploy the pairing of Kris Letang and Paul Martin out there to run the PP starting tonight. Martin has been a really solid addition and I love Letang's speed and grace, so it's worth a shot. They'll need a boost tonight, because they've got Vancouver, a team with a solid penalty kill unit and Roberto Luongo in net.