Second Period rally keeps Pittsburgh Penguins alive past Philadelphia Flyers 3-2 -NHL Playoffs Update
Pittsburgh keeps getting lucky as they won their second straight matchup of the 2012 National Hockey League (NHL) Stanley Cup Playoff Eastern Conference Quarterfinal series against Philadelphia as Penguins rallied in round-two past Flyers, 3-2, Friday night,
April 20, 2012, at the sold-out CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Penguins have now forced a game 6 competition ever since being on the verge of elimination coming into game 4 as Philadelphia had won three back-to-back contests. Pittsburgh needs to continue working the power play if their planning to battle it out in a
final game 7.
"Our defence made hard and good plays," Pittsburgh coach, Dan Bylsma, said about his team’s great power play killing. "We finally got what looks like a playoff game a little bit more tonight."
Philadelphia had five chances to get a goal with an added man on board but Pittsburgh well played out defensive strategy kept them alive in the match and limited Flyers to only two power play goals.
Scoring the first goal continued to turn out as being bad luck since any team that has scored the opener has lost throughout this series. Philadelphia’s Matt Carle did exactly that as he got his first of the quarterfinals on a power play with Matt Read feeding
him the puck near the centre.
Steve Sullivan fired it through Philadelphia goalie, Marc-Andre Bryzgalov for another power play goal at 14:51 while Scott Hartnell finalised the first period with a Flyers lead at 17:35.
Pittsburgh was going to keep Marc-Andre Fleury in the net despite giving up two goals in the opening 20 minutes, but the decision proved to be a well played out one as the next 40 minutes were pure Penguins domination.
"The pace was still fast and furious," Philadelphia coach, Peter Laviolette, said. "It was physical ... we just couldn't get it in the back of the net as often. We had opportunities. We had good looks at it. Their goaltender made big saves at the end."
Jordan Staal and Tyler Kennedy scored two straight nearly three minutes apart in the second period to take the match by a single point.
Game 6 of the intense Eastern Conference series is set to take place on Sunday, April 22nd, at 12:00 PM ET at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center.
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