Usually it’s a good thing for the Pittsburgh Penguins when Sidney Crosby sets the tone of the game on the very first shift.
Such was not the case Monday night.
When the Pens’ captain misplayed a bouncing puck at the visitors’ blue line, he inadvertently swatted the puck directly into the mitt of a rushing Brad Marchand, who raced all the way down the ice on a breakaway and beat Pittsburgh goalie Tomas Vokoun glove-side just 28 seconds into the game.
“He finds every loose puck, and that first goal was obviously huge,” teammate Patrice Bergeron said of Marchand. “He was turning the puck well and he was first on pucks and finding loose pucks all the time, and that’s what you need from a guy like him.”
Crosby’s attempt to backcheck was for not, and the Bruins would never relinquish their lead.
In a tasty morsel of foresight, Penguins coach Dan Bylsma predicted that the team who scored first would win Game 2. Unfortunately for his bunch, he was right.
Also a safe bet? The team that loses the turnover battle 12-2 has a great shot at losing the game.
“It’s easy to look at one mistake or one play at the start of the game,” Bylsma said after his team’s 6-1 beatdown, “but that’s not an indication of the rest of the guys. We need to play a lot better than that. We need to get back to our game, back to our best, and that’s not just one or two guys.
“As a group, we need to be a lot better. We need to get to our foundation of how we play and play as a group, and we didn’t do that. That includes every one of them, all of us, not just 87, 71 and 58.”
Uncharacteristically out of sorts, Crosby was involved in more giveaways and fall-downs than scoring chances.
For the first time all season, the player with the greatest points-per-game average has been held pointless in back-to-back games.
Marchand is a plus-six in these playoffs. Crosby is a minus-four, giving him the worst plus/minus of the postseason’s top 12 scorers.
Crosby is losing most of the face-offs he takes in this series, and through two games he has nearly as many penalty minutes (four) as he has shots (six).
Time for the consensus Greatest Player in the World to prove it in Game 3.