OTTAWA -- It's Marc-Andre Fleury's team.
And for all the many reasons that Mike Sullivan and the Penguins' coaching staff pulled him from these Stanley Cup playoffs, most of those reaching well beyond actual goaltending, if you ask me, it's got to be his team once again for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final Thursday back in Pittsburgh.
There. Now that I got that out of my system ...
"I don't think we can be discouraged by this," Sullivan was saying after the Senators stole Game 6, 2-1, Tuesday night at Canadian Tire Centre to force the coming climax. "We did a lot of really good things out there. We had a lot of shots. We had traffic. We had zone time. We had possession time. There were a lot of things to like."
The coach wasn't incorrect. He seldom is. The Penguins were the superior side all evening, skating with authority, commanding possession and running up a 46-30 advantage in shots, 75-46 in attempted shots. Their 7-0 slaughter in Game 5 saw similar totals of 36-25 and 56-47, meaning they were even better in this one.
The difference was goaltending.
To continue reading, log into your account:
