Penguins Defeat Rangers 5-2 at Garden and Lose the Home and Home Monday

The Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden 5-2 on Monday night. They took both games of the home and home series. The Blueshirts played a much better game overall but there are still gaping holes that need to be filled. Henrik Lundqvist gives up too many soft goals and simply needs to be better. His goals against average is going up along with the mounting Ranger losses. They played well for the first two periods but could not match the Penguins in the third. The top line is the only line consistently scoring and Ryan Callahan, Chris Drury and Christopher Higgins can’t buy a goal. The great Marian Gaborik scored both goals (one a power play goal) last night and put himself in front of the net to do so. Hall of Famer Brett Hull always said goal scorers put themselves in position to score and bury the puck. Gaborik is one of those amazing players. After the whistle in front of the Penguin net Crosby hit Gaborik with his gloved hand in the 3rd period and Cindy bounced off Gaborik. In fact Gaborik didn’t even budge. It was pretty funny. Of course Bill Guerin stepped in and helped out. Michal Rozsival is stinking it up on defense and maybe he should be a healthy scratch once in a while. Lundqvist stopped 28 of 32 shots, including 8 on the Penguins power play and 1 shorthanded shot. It pained me to see the dirty former New Jersey Devil Mike Rupp score a hat trick, his third on an empty net goal as time ticked away. Bobby Sanguinetti is being sent back to the Hartford Wolf Pack to make room for the returning Wade Redden. The three stars of the game were Mike Rupp, Marian Gaborik Sidney (aka Cindy) Crosby.