PENGUINS DRAW FIRST BLOOD
Blue Jackets put up fight but Pittsburgh takes opener
PITTSBURGH, PA.— Columbus coach Todd Richards insists his upstart team isn’t in the playoffs “just to go to school.”
Maybe, but the Pittsburgh Penguins provided a pretty valuable lesson in perseverance during a 4-3 victory in Game1of the Eastern Conference quarter-finals on Wednesday.
Down two after 21 minutes of slow and sometimes sloppy hockey, the Metropolitan Division champions responded by scoring the final three goals, including Brandon Sutter’s goahead wrist shot 8:18 into the third period.
“I think we expected a tight game,” Sutter said after the third playoff goal of his career. “They got up and we stuck with it. It was a good win.”
One that came with more than a few tense moments. Beau Bennett and Matt Niskanen scored powerplay goals 45 seconds apart in the second period, erasing Pittsburgh’s two-goal deficit. Jussi Jokinen also scored for the Penguins and MarcAndre Fleury overcame some shaky defence in front of him to stop 31 shots. Game 2 is Saturday night.
“We have to learn from it but we found a way to win,” Pittsburgh forward Sidney Crosby said. “Obviously we didn’t start the way we wanted, getting down two goals. I think we have to clean up some things.”
If not, a series expected to be a romp could turn into something else entirely.
Jack Johnson, Mark Letestu and Derek Mackenzie scored for the Blue Jackets, who remain in search of their first-ever playoff win. Sergei Bobrovsky finished with 28 saves but was handcuffed by Sutter’s knuckler at the end of a 2-on-1 break. The Blue Jackets insisted they wouldn’t be intimidated despite Pittsburgh’s overwhelming edge in playoff experience and star power. The Penguins swept the five regular-season meetings between the teams, but Columbus surged after the Olympic break, rising to the seventh seed in the East while the injury-riddled Penguins coasted to a division title. If the NHL’s youngest team was scared by the stage, it hardly showed. “People were wondering how we would start the game with our inexperience, but we were pretty comfortable after the first period with a 2-1 lead and maybe let off the gas,” Columbus centre Ryan Johansen said. The Penguins righted themselves in the third. The miscues that plagued them for the first 40 minutes disappeared, replaced by the kind of responsible play they know they’ll need to make a serious run at the franchise’s fourth Stanley Cup.