Sidney Crosby ended two streaks when he fired a one-timer past goaltender Carey Price to beat the Montreal Canadiens 2-1 in overtime on Friday night. He snapped a personal four-game goalless drought and scored the team’s first power-play goal in nine attempts.
The Penguins earned the power play when the Canadiens took a too-many men penalty 3:09 into overtime. On the ensuing faceoff, Montreal center Tomas Plekanec’s stick snapped, and the Penguins were able to take advantage with Kris Letang passing to Evgeni Malkin at the center point, who the made the pass to Crosby in the right-wing faceoff circle.
“Hopefully we can continue to build off this one,” said Crosby. “We’re getting some guys back. Hopefully we’ll gain some momentum moving forward.”
Before last night’s performance, Crosby and Malkin were chosen to play in the NHL All-star game in Columbus, Ohio on January 25th. Crosby and Malkin were keys for the Penguins. In addition to the game-winner, Crosby had four shots and was the first star of the game. Malkin also had four shots and scored the game-tying goal in the late second period.
Malkin’s goal was scored on a slapshot from the right point. Beau Bennett screened Price and Simon Despres and Nick Spaling earned assists.
“Its a tough game, Montreal is a good team… Go to net, you know shoot puck more.” said Malkin.
Montreal’s Max Pacioretty scored the first goal of the night at 18:50 of the first period. Andrei Markov had the only assist.
The Penguins had opportunities to win the game in regulation. They earned a power play at 12:16 of the third period when Tom Gilbert interfered with Zach Sill, and had nine seconds with a 5-on-3 advantage when Alexei Emelin hooked Brandon Sutter, but were unable to beat Price, who was the game’s second star.
“I thought we got better as the game went along,” said Penguins head coach Mike Johnston. I didn’t like our first period from my point of view, I thought we turned over too many pucks and gave up too many transition opportunities and you just can’t do that against a team who is really good in transition.”
Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 27 of 28 Canadiens shots to earn his 21st win of the season. He was the game’s third star.
Photo credit: NHL
