The Montreal Canadiens’ stingy defense and goaltending once
again shut down the Pittsburgh Penguins’ offensive attack.
Once again, they held Penguins captain Sidney Crosby off the
scoresheet entirely.
In the end, it didn’t matter. The Penguins found a way
to win a 2-1 nail-biter and take a 3-2 lead in this best-of-seven
series.
Pittsburgh came out looking to control the play from the
start, playing physically and taking an early 6-1 shot advantage.
“We came out hard,” Crosby said. “We wanted
to make sure we got to our game right away and created momentum
because of that.”
But the best sign for the Penguins early on was the big stop
goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury made on Canadiens sniper Mike
Cammalleri in the game’s first 90 seconds, the first of 32
saves he’d make on the night.
“Flower made some big saves, early on [when] they had a
couple great chances, and throughout the whole game,” Crosby
said. “You need that this time of year. You don’t want
to put him in those positions, but they create things sometimes,
and he was there.”
Fleury has made a career of rebounding from disappointing
outings in a big way. And, after Game 4, where he watched a 2-1
lead evaporate into a 3-2 loss in a 93-second span of the third
period, it wasn’t surprising that he would come up big in
Game 5, making the big stops when his team needed them most.
“He’s been that guy for us,” Penguins head
coach Dan Bylsma said. “He’s proven he’s a guy
who bounces back and is focused after a tough loss or a bad game,
or when our team is in big situations.”
Habs netminder Jaroslav Halak and his defensemen withstood
the Penguins’ early onslaught and turned on their own
offensive attack, going on to outshoot Pittsburgh 33-25 on the
night. But the Penguins managed to get two pucks through –
one late in the first, the other midway through the second –
and they did it in the only way that was going to beat the
Canadiens.
With Montreal doing such an effective job of collapsing
around the net and limiting the Penguins’ shooting lanes,
both goals were scored by Pittsburgh defenseman – Kris Letang
and Sergei Gonchar – from the point, and both with plenty of
traffic in front of Halak.
It’s probably not a coincidence that two players who
weren’t in the lineup for Game 4 played a key role in the
Penguins’ ramped-up presence around the net. Veteran forwards
Bill Guerin, who was injured, and Mike Rupp, who was a healthy
scratch, were inserted into the lineup, and each was responsible
for screening Halak on one of the Penguins’ goals.
“We talked this morning about getting Billy back in and
what it would bring,” Bylsma said. “One of his assets
is being in that net-front area and, when you’ve got a
goaltender who’s playing like that, you need to get people
there. We did a better job of that, and that’s an indication
of how we need to score goals. Mike Rupp did a good job of doing
that; Billy Guerin as well. Two big additions, and two big
goals.”
Generating traffic has been an important part of the
Penguins’ game plan throughout the series, Crosby said, but
in Game 5, they found a way to execute.
“They do a good job of blocking guys out, but
you’ve got to find a way," the Penguins captain said.
"You’re battling to get [in front], but it’s not easy,
and it was a great job by those guys of battling to get in
position.”
Bylsma made a gutsy move, benching high-profile
trade-deadline pickup Alex Ponikarovsky, along with Ruslan
Fedotenko, in favor of more hard-nosed players like Rupp and rookie
Mark Letestu. The gamble paid off.
And, with Crosby still being frustrated by the
Canadiens’ shutdown defense – a lower-body injury
suffered by Habs blueliner Hal Gill in Game 5, if serious, would be
a big boost to Crosby’s chances of seeing some open ice
– fellow star center Evgeni Malkin stepped up. Malkin was
limited to one assist on the night, but had several consecutive
shifts in the second period where he was clearly the dominant
player on the ice. His strength on the puck made Gonchar’s
goal possible, and he led the Penguins with six shots on the night.
“Geno has the ability to raise to a different level
with his speed and size and be a bull out there,” Bylsma
said. “There were three, four or five instances on the rush
in the offensive zone where he had the puck on a string, and
he’s tough to handle when he does that. He glues everybody,
including the coaches, to the edge of their seats to see
what’s going to happen. I love seeing him there.”
Despite Pittsburgh building a two-goal lead, the Canadiens
battled back in exactly the manner one would expect from a team
that stared down elimination three times – and came up a
winner on each occasion – in their first-round series against
Washington. Cammalleri finally put one home with just 31 seconds
remaining in the third, and the Habs nearly tied it in the waning
seconds of the game.
Now the Penguins head back to Montreal for Monday’s
Game 6 with a chance to turn out the lights on the Canadiens’
Cinderella season. But, if this scrappy Montreal team has proved
anything in this year’s playoffs, it’s that
they’re not to be counted out.
“It was a tremendous game, highly competitive and a
high level of intensity, and we had some good opportunities,”
Habs coach Jacques Martin said. “Now we go home and play in
front of our fans. We are just going to have to regroup and make
sure we have 20 guys that are ready to compete.”
The Penguins know Montreal’s battle level will be
there. And, if there’s one thing they’d like to avoid,
it’s giving the Habs an opportunity for a winner-take-all
Game 7 back in Pittsburgh.
“This team deserves a lot of credit for the way they
keep coming, and we have to respect that,” Bylsma said.
“We have to come with a heightened sense of urgency and
desperation in Game 6, in a tough place, against a team that is not
going to quit.”
