PITTSBURGH – Given the gift of home ice by the Philadelphia Flyers in a first-round Stanley Cup playoff showdown with those same archrivals, the Pittsburgh Penguins looked plenty appreciative Wednesday night.
Forgive the Flyers if they’re no longer in a giving mood.
All-world centers Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin each registered a goal and an assist as the Penguins opened their defense of the Eastern Conference postseason crown with a comprehensive 4-1 Game One victory at Mellon Arena.
The Penguins opened the playoffs with a thorough home triumph over a hated opponent for the second consecutive year. Pittsburgh blanked Ottawa, the team that dumped them in 2007’s opening round, 4-0 last April 9 en route to a sweep of the Senators.
The Flyers squandered an opportunity to earn the East’s No. 4 seed on the regular season’s last day, falling to the New York Rangers at home and pushing Pittsburgh into the higher seed for this rematch of last spring’s conference final.
Predictably, the Penguins appeared energized by that bit of serendipity, controlling the puck in the Flyers end and thus dominating the game through the first two periods. By the time the visitors strung a few scoring chances together in the final 20 minutes, the margin was too great to be reversed.
Crosby’s first of the playoffs galvanized an already energized atmosphere in the NHL’s oldest barn, as he corralled a pass from Malkin at the right edge of the crease and shoved a forehand shot off goalie Martin Biron’s right skate and in. Following a video review to determine if the net had come loose of its moorings prior to the puck entering, the Penguins captain was awarded the power-play marker at 4:41 of the first.
Pittsburgh outshot Philadelphia 14-9 in the opening frame, but it wasn’t until the second that the home side started to apply the screws. Tyler Kennedy, sprung on a three-on-one rush by Jordan Staal, used his rangy linemate as a decoy before finessing a wrister past Biron’s left leg at 1:39.
A relatively tepid period played out after Kennedy’s first-ever postseason goal, as the Penguins tried to suffocate the life out of the contest through poised puck possession. The two clubs headed to the second intermission with 1:48 of power-play time awaiting the Flyers, perhaps their last legitimate chance to make a game of it.
Flyers captain Mike Richards came close to halving his team’s deficit during that early-third period man advantage, but his wrist shot drilled the right post. The league’s scoring champion would turn that missed opportunity into “game over” at the other end of the rink soon after.
Malkin took advantage of an egregious mistake by the normally reliable Mike Knuble to generate the Penguins’ third goal. Knuble carelessly directed the puck behind his own net with too much authority, and when it caromed into the slot, Malkin – who led the NHL with 113 points in the regular season – earned his second point of the playoffs and first goal by patiently dragging to his backhand and calmly tossing it in at 6:28.
An unusually successful night at the faceoff circle for the average-on-draws Penguins came to a head a few minutes later, as Crosby’s clean win at the left dot set the table for Mark Eaton’s long-range rip through a screen that found twine.
Simon Gagne finally put some rubber behind Pittsburgh’s Marc-Andre Fleury when he buried a rebound on the power play with under five minutes to play, but that would be the lone blemish for Fleury, who stopped 26 of 27 Philadelphia salvos to improve his playoff record to 17-10.
It was the sixth straight Game One loss for the Flyers, who topped Washington and Montreal in last year’s postseason before falling to the Penguins in five.
Contact matt.gatjka@prohockeynews.com
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