No Stars No Worries; Penguins Paste Toronto, 7-1
As I watched in slack-jawed awe from my perch on a bar stool at the Pennsbury Station last night while our Penguins pounded visiting Toronto, I confess to being astounded. Not to be negative, but I figured this would surely be the night when all the injuries and illnesses caught up to us. After all, we were down top guns Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Bryan Rust and Jeff Carter, not to mention ace blueliner Kris Letang. Flex Seal be darned, here are only so many holes you can patch before a ship starts to take on water and sink, right?
Yet to my utter amazement, not only did we stay afloat, we destroyed the Maple Leafs in the process. For the record, a pretty good team.
Drew O’Connor drew first blood for our boys just past the midway point of the opening period. Planted in the crease, the big rookie served as a bank board for Marcus Pettersson’s long-range shot. However, the Leafs quickly knotted the score less than a minute later on a tally by Jason Spezza to cap the scoring for the opening 20 minutes.