Game 10: Pens get Sharked

There are no sure goals with Sabu

Sorry for the late recap, we've been battling illness. Anyways onto the thoughts...

• First of all, gotta give props to Dany Sabourin who again played excellently and held the Penguins in the game for much longer than they deserved to be in it.
• The Sharks are now coached by Todd McLellan, who was a Detroit assistant. And it showed because the Sharks sure did show some shades of Red tonight, controlling the puck for most of the night, limiting the opponents shots to a measely figure (and the shots allowed mostly came from outside non-prime scoring areas). The Sharks are an elite regular season team, especially at home and it was on display tonight.
• Describe Sidney Crosby's night in a word? Frustrating. Mr. Sid went 4-20 in the faceoff circle as "Jumbo" Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau pretty much had their way winning clean draw after clean draw all night long. Crosby, like so many of his teammates, also failed to get a shot on goal (though he did ring one off iron) and slammed the puck into the boards showing his frustration after a borderline penalty.
• From the "how the heck does this happen department", the official scorer credited the Penguins with 10 giveaways but then awarded Shark players 13 takeaways. Does that make sense to anyone?
• Further, the Sharks were hit for 21 giveaways but Penguin players were only credited 7 takeaways. Were San Jose players going Ilya Kovalchuk and stealing pucks from their own teammates?
• When the number of minor penalties taken (6) is approaching the number of shots you get on goal (11) you just know it wasn't a fun night....But at least the penalty kill went 6 for 6, right?
• The last five minutes of the game the Penguins showed some real effort, got some good cycling shifts and Ruslan Fedotenko took advantage of playing with Crosby and Evgeni Malkin by popping Crosby's rebound in. So also at least Crosby and Malkin could push their duel scoring streaks to now six games and counting.
• This team needs a skilled winger. Janne Pesonen has points in every AHL game he's played so far. Of course they're probably not going to fly him out for the West Coast trip, but just sayin'...
• In the end, definitely a game the Penguins didn't deserve to win and now go to 0-1-1 on this road trip. But the toughest two games of the trip (at NYR, at SJ) are in the rear view mirror with two relatively easy opponents the Coyotes (3-4-0) and then St. Louis (a surprising start of 5-3-0).
  

Finally, thank you to the Arlington County street construction guys out there for starting jackhammer and other heavy machinery work at 6 AM sharp this morning on the street in our neighborhood directly behind our house. That is really lovely after a West Coast game that keeps us up until 1 AM.