Fleury saves day for defending champs
With Murray felled by injury, veteran goalie backstops Pittsburgh to Game 1 win
PITTSBURGH — Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 31 shots in a surprise start in place of injured Matt Murray and the Pittsburgh Penguins opened their Stanley Cup title defence Wednesday with a 3-1 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Murray was scheduled to get the nod in the playoff opener, but was a late scratch after suffering a lower-body injury during warm-ups. Fleury withstood an early push by Columbus and the Penguins responded by pulling away from the untested Blue Jackets.
Phil Kessel had a goal and an assist for Pittsburgh. Nick Bonino and Bryan Rust also scored and Evgeni Malkin assisted on Rust and Kessel’s goals in his first game back after missing the final three weeks of the regular season because of an upperbody injury.
Matt Calvert scored for Columbus in the third period and Sergei Bobrovsky made 26 saves. Game 2 is Friday in Pittsburgh. Fleury spent most of the season gracefully receding into the background while Murray took over as the No. 1 goalie after helping lead the Penguins to a championship last spring.
Rather than deal the franchise’s career wins leader at the trade deadline for depth elsewhere, Pittsburgh general manager Jim Rutherford held on to Fleury, confident the club would need the goaltender’s services at some point.
That point came about 20 minutes before the opening faceoff, when Murray appeared to tweak something while stretching to make a save during his usual pre-game routine. Enter Fleury, who skated onto the PPG Paints Arena ice to a massive ovation, then spent the first period single-handedly keeping the uncharacteristically flat Penguins in it.
The Blue Jackets, making just their third playoff appearance in franchise history, insisted they wouldn’t be overcome by the stakes or the stage. For a long stretch at the start, they weren’t. Columbus outshot Pittsburgh 16-3 in first period, peppering Fleury and hogging the puck.
Fleury’s steady play helped Pittsburgh survive and it took just 3:45 for the Penguins to reassert their dominance in the second.
Rust finished a pretty sequence in which Malkin fed the puck to Kessel, who delicately kicked it to Rust in the slot. Rust ripped a shot over Bobrovsky’s stick 1:15 into the period to give the Penguins the lead. Kessel doubled the advantage 150 seconds later, biding his time in the left circle on the power play, then threading a wrist shot over Bobrovsky’s glove to make it 2-0.
Bonino camped in front of the Columbus net, then pounded home a shot on the doorstep 16:25 into the second to push Pittsburgh’s advantage to three goals and the Blue Jackets never recovered.
After overwhelming the Penguins at the start, Columbus managed just 16 shots over the final two periods and never really came close to threatening as a matchup between the teams that finished with the secondand fourth-best records in the NHL looked one-sided.
Notes: Malkin’s two assists moved him past Jaromir Jagr and into thirdplace on the franchise’s list for playoff assists (83), trailing only Sidney Crosby and Mario Lemieux.