Pens 4, Sabres 1

The Pens put a good trouncing on the Buffalo Sabres last night in Buffalo, 4-1. Buffalo opened the game with a flurry of shots at Pens goalie, Ty Conklin, throughout the first period. Conklin weathered that storm of pucks to preserve a tie after one. The Pens opened the second period by scoring on a Jarkko Ruutu breakaway at 7:28 and never gave up the lead. Sykora got the game winner, Malkin chipped in his 34 of the season in the third and Colby Armstrong tallied an empty netter at the end of the third to put the Sabres away once and for all.

Pittsburgh was flat coming out in the first and allowed Buffalo to gain momentum, which led to 17 shots on goal in the first 20 minutes. After the intermission the teams looked to be on much more even footing. It would have been awesome to hear what was said in that locker room during the intermission but osmehow I doubt I would re-print much of it at all since it would look something like this:

"look you @#^&*%#@, time to get your $#%^ together and #%^&$%#@@ play some @$%%&^%# hockey!" or something like that...

It's going to be a tough week ahead for the Pens as Sunday's game was the first of 5 over the next 8 days. Next up is Florda on Tuesday at home, at Montreal on Thursday, Ottawa at the Igloo on Saturday and another home game on Sunday against San Jose. Looking at the conference standings the Montreal and Ottawa games look to be the important ones to come away with 2 points.

Injury Update - Sid Crosby looks to be back in playing form and I suspect he will be on the ice for the Montreal game. Marc Andre Fleury should be returning from his rehab stint in Wilkes Barre and should also be back on the ice this week.