Archive for January, 2010
Penguins beat Red Wings, 2-1, in shootout
In a rematch of the past two Stanley Cup finals, the Penguins beat the Detroit Red Wings, 2-1, in a shootout today at Mellon Arena.
Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin each scored for the Penguins in the shootout.
After a scoreless first period in which the Penguins outshot Detroit, 16-6, Crosby got the game’s first goal at 16:46 of the second period.
Crosby’s sister looks to match Sidney with her own Olympic appearance
To most he’s known as one of the world’s greatest hockey players, but to Taylor Crosby he will always just be big brother.
Taylor, the younger sister of Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, is in Ottawa this weekend with her teammates from the Cole Harbour Red Wings girls’ bantam hockey team from Nova Scotia competing in the 30th annual Nepean Girls’ Hockey Association Tournament.
Taylor, 13, doesn’t see her 22-year-old brother very often during the NHL season, but says they talk and text regularly.
“Just never on game day,” she said with a laugh. “It’s kind of a superstition. But when he’s not playing, we always talk, and we talk a lot of hockey and both sides of it, whether he’s playing or I’m playing.”
Penguins Notebook: Battlefield casualty has lost mementos replaced
Thirty days after Army Sgt. Justin Lubash was seriously wounded and lost his belongings in an attack in Afghanistan, he got a couple of items replaced. With a personal touch.
Lubash, 23, a Munhall native, was a guest at the Penguins’ morning skate Thursday at Mellon Arena, and in the locker room afterward coach Dan Bylsma presented him with a new 2009 Stanley Cup banner and center Sidney Crosby gave him a new Crosby jersey. Lubash’s had been gifts from relatives that he took with him to Afghanistan.
Senators prevail, 4-1
This was not all about the things the Penguins didn’t do or could have done better.
Not when Ottawa was so relentless, so efficient. When its goaltending was so solid, its commitment to sound defense so firm.
Let no one question whether the Senators earned their 4-1 victory Thursday night at Mellon Arena.
The Penguins just figure, with good reason, that they could have made Ottawa work a little harder to get it.
Penguins Notebook: Quality and quantity
After a day off Tuesday, the Penguins had a long practice. Many players were on the ice about 90 minutes.
“We don’t have that much of an opportunity to practice,” center Sidney Crosby said of an NHL schedule that has been condensed to accommodate the Olympics break. “So we try to make the most of it.”
Bylsma started off on a light note. For the first 10 minutes, the team scrimmaged with skaters holding their sticks in the opposite hand — right-handers shot left, and vice versa — and the goaltenders holding their sticks by the blades.
The shootout competition toward the end of the session was turned inside-out, too, with those who scored remaining in the competition rather than those who missed.
“Dan always brings this kind of stuff,” Talbot said. “It’s good for us. It’s good to keep things loose. And even when we were losing, this is stuff that he brings.
“It’s great. It makes it fun. It’s a long season. January, February comes, guys are a little tired, and it’s good to have fun out there.”
Pens Salute Munhall Army Sgt. Injured In Afghanistan
The Pittsburgh Penguins are accustomed to hearing a resounding applause from fans at the Mellon Arena, but on Thursday they took a timeout to salute an Army sergeant wounded in Afghanistan.
“I ran up to the top of a bunker — I got it. It got hit by two grenades, right in a row,” recalled Sgt. Justin Lubash of one day less than a month ago when his squad was attacked in Afghanistan.
“One hit me in the upper body and one hit my in my lower body,” said Lubash.
