Saturday, October 10, 2009
Will Eller
Tonight your Pittsburgh Penguins travel to Canada and face the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Leafs haven't got off to a fast start to the 2009 NHL season their 0-2-1 record has them last in the Eastern Conference. The Pittsburgh Penguins however have a record of 3-1-0 are tied for first place.Last season the entire Penguins season came down to one game in Toronto, it wasn't pretty and it changed this team forever. The Pens lost 7-3 in a game where it just seemed the players and coaches just gave up, and a few hours later Micheal Therrien was fired. The rest as they say is history as the Pens hired Dan Byslma and went on to win the Stanley Cup.
Here are the lines that practice together for this mornings practice, however expect to see Stall get some playing time with Malkin and Fedetenko as it works so well against the Flyers on Thursday night.
Kunitz - Crosby - Guerin
Dupuis - Malkin - Fedetenko
Cooke - Staal - Kennedy
Rupp - Adams - Godard
Orpik - Gonchar
Eaton - Letang
McKee - Goligoski
Fleury
In my opinion I think it is time for the forwards to play some lock-down forechecking. We saw pieces of this during the Flyers game on Kennedy's goal in the third period. In order to help the fowards with the forecheck the Pens are going to need the defense to pinch in a little on the points to keep the puck in the offensive zone longer. Dan Bylsma's system is this: keep the puck in the offensive zone and it gives the opposing team less of a chance to score on you. Pretty simple.
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