Festive Penguins Flog Flyers, 7-3

Back in the day, the Penguins-Flyers rivalry featured plenty of fisticuffs, roughhouse play and spilled blood. It was Paul Baxter vs. Behn Wilson, Jay Caufield vs. Jeff Chychrun, Gary Roberts vs. Ben Eager, Big Georges Laraque vs. Riley Cote and Deryk Engelland vs. Wayne Simmonds, to name but a few battles and battlers.

In keeping with the general trend of the sport, it’s a kinder, gentler rivalry these days, with nary a dropped glove.

Just don’t tell the Flyers that. Or ex-Pen Ryan Poehling, plastered on a jarring open-ice hit by Noel Acciari.

In the latest installment of the Battle of Pennsylvania (or Commonwealth Cold War in you prefer) our Pens grabbed their Philly foes by the scruff of the neck and ran them out of PPG Paints Arena to the tune of a 7-3 hiding.

Our top guns paced the attack. Sidney Crosby (four points), Rickard Rakell (three) and Bryan Rust (two) combined for three goals and nine points. Other black-and-gold goal-getters included Michael Bunting, Philip Tomasino and Blake Lizotte, who each tailed a power-play goal.

We throttled the Flyers from the opening draw, piling up a 4-1 lead after 20 minutes of play. Philly pushed back in the second period on goals by Noah Cates and Sean Couturier to close the gap to 4-3 and provide a little tension for the 18,290 fans in attendance. But Bunting scored his second goal of the game at 18:48 of the frame on a slapper from between the circles, courtesy of a beautiful feed from Evgeni Malkin, to quell the uprising. One of two primary assists on the night for Geno.

No, it wasn’t a perfect game. In particular, we let down and got outplayed in the second period. But all-in-all, a great way to enter the Christmas break!

Puckpourri

With Owen Pickering on the shelf week-to-week, Ryan Graves rejoined the lineup and skated with Ryan Shea on the third pairing. Recent pickup Pierre-Olivier Joseph slotted next to Kris Letang (both were a minus-2). Erik Karlsson continued to pair, and thrive, with Matt Grzelcyk.

For one night, anyway, our patchwork ‘d’ held up reasonably well.

Tristan Jarry, who appears to have become the de facto starter, stopped 24 of 27 shots in a workmanlike effort. Compared to Philly’s goalies, he’s Georges Vezina.

Still don’t like the fact that Mike Sullivan has buried Lizotte on the fourth line between Acciari and Matt Nieto (a rose between two thorns?). I get what Sully’s trying to do…piece together four reasonably solid lines, including a “grind” line. But it’s counterintuitive to take your heretofore hottest scorer and place him in a position where he receives little-to-no offensive support.

On the plus side, Sullivan deserves a ton of credit for the team’s shocking turnaround. I’d guess there were times when he was the only guy in the dressing room who truly believed they could do it. By the sheer force of his will, he held the troops together and relit their competitive fires while making key adjustments.

Incredibly, Sid has tied Mario Lemieux for the all-time franchise record of 1033 assists!

His line has been absolutely on fire of late. Sid has a pair of goals and 10 points in our past six games. For the season, he’s producing at better than a point-per-game clip (39 points in 36 games).

Rakell has 11 points (5+6) in his past six games and 17 points (9+8) in his past 13. With a team-high 16 goals, he’s already eclipsed last season’s total.

And Rust? The Razor likewise has 11 points (6+5) in his last half-dozen games. An astonishing 19 points (10+9) in his past 13!

Oh, and Karlsson has quietly produced a goal and 12 points during those 13 games, to go with a sparkling plus-9.

Small wonder our resurgent Pens are 9-3-1 over that baker’s dozen stretch.

Standings-wise, we enter the break with a record of 16-15-5 and 37 points, one behind Ottawa in the chase for the second Eastern Conference wild-card spot.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!