After Crosby's goal, Fleury snuffs Sharks' final shot to give Penguins two big points
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Marc-Andre Fleury denies San Jose's Dan Boyle in the final shootout round to give the Penguins the victory last night at Mellon Arena. -
Jordan Staal, middle, skates in to congratulate Bill Thomas on his first NHL goal last night in the second period.
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Marc-Andre Fleury already had turned aside 38 pucks and realized that every one of those saves mattered.
A lot.
But he also knew that none would mean as much as the one Fleury was focused on making as San Jose defenseman Dan Boyle moved in on him in the third round of a shootout last night at Mellon Arena.
Sidney Crosby had just given the Penguins a 1-0 edge in the shootout by sticking a shot between the legs of Sharks goalie Brian Boucher, putting his team one save away from what could be a statement victory.
"I was a little nervous," Fleury said. "Because I knew that if I saved it, we'd win."
And they did, as Fleury threw out his right leg to deny Boyle and secure the Penguins' 2-1 victory. It was their third in four games and raised their record to 27-24-5.
They are tied with Carolina for ninth place in the Eastern Conference, one point behind eighth-place Florida. The Hurricanes have two games in hand on the Penguins, the Panthers three.
Crosby, who was battling a flu-like ailment, was the only shooter on either side to get a goal in the shootout.
Whatever symptoms he might have been experiencing didn't affect his powers of observation. He studied how Boucher stopped Petr Sykora and Evgeni Malkin on the Penguins' first two shootout tries and factored that information into his own attempt.
"I just tried a bit of a different move," Crosby said. "I just watched him the first couple of times and thought there was some room in the five-hole."
Enough to get a puck through, anyway.
The Penguins, who generated just 11 shots on goal in a 2-1 loss Oct. 28 at San Jose, matched that output in the first period but were unable to beat Boucher.
Neither team scored until 18:26 of the second, when Fox Chapel native Bill Thomas got his first goal as a member of the Penguins.
It was made possible by linemate Miroslav Satan, who carried the puck from his own zone into the San Jose end before flipping it to Thomas. Thomas carried it across the San Jose goal line and threw it toward the front of the net, where it caromed off the stick of Sharks defenseman Rob Blake and behind Boucher.
"The first goal was huge for us, for our confidence," Penguins coach Michel Therrien said.
And while it might not have played out precisely the way Thomas envisioned scoring at Mellon Arena when he was a boy, this was no time to sweat the details.
"It went in, so that's all that matters," he said. "I got a little deep and tried to get it back to [Jordan] Staal, and just got fortunate that it hit [Blake's] stick and caught the goalie off-guard."
That bounce denied Staal a chance to break the scoreless tie, but he still picked up an assist, his 100th point in the NHL.
The lead stood up until 11:07 of the third, when Joe Pavelski of the Sharks ended up with the puck near the front lip of the crease and whipped it by Fleury. Rather than deflate the Penguins, Pavelski's goal seemed to strengthen their resolve.
"We upgraded our intensity after that goal," Therrien said.
Both teams had superb chances to go in front as regulation wound down.
The Penguins were on a power play with 3:47 left when Crosby and Malkin executed a set play to near-perfection. Malkin took a faceoff to the left of the San Jose net and pushed the puck toward the net, where Crosby claimed it and got off a good backhander that Boucher stopped.
Seconds after that man-advantage expired, Sharks winger Mike Grier had a breakaway but was unable to beat Fleury, who made 36 saves in regulation and overtime before turning aside Milan Michalek, Pavelski and Boyle in the shootout.
The victory was a fair reward for a solid effort against an elite opponent, the second in a row for the Penguins, who were coming off a 3-0 loss to Detroit Sunday.
"It's good to see that two top teams, back to back, we could play with them," Crosby said.
And even better to see that they could beat one.
"They're the best team in the league, and we gave them a good challenge all game long," Fleury said. "It was a good effort by everybody."
First Published February 12, 2009 12:00 am
