Pens stop the bleeding
PITTSBURGH — Evgeni Malkin set up all the goals, Petr Sykora and Sidney Crosby scored them. Marc-Andre Fleury made a series of important saves in the third period. Ruslan Fedotenko didn't score, but unexpectedly set the tone with a one-punch fight.
For one night, the Pittsburgh Penguins looked like the talented team that went to the Stanley Cup finals last season.
Sykora ended Pittsburgh's seven-game drought without a power-play goal while scoring twice and Malkin came out of a slump with three assists, leading the Penguins to a 3-1 victory over the Atlanta Thrashers Tuesday night.
The Penguins, outscored 10-1 in their previous two games, also got Crosby's first power-play goal in 26 games while ending a five-game losing streak. They also had dropped five in a row at home, getting outscored 23-8 during a streak that included embarrassing losses of 7-3 to Toronto and 6-1 to Florida.
"The win feels good — it's nicer the next morning to wake up and come to the rink," Sykora said. "Everybody goes through this, but the sooner you stop it, the better chance you have to come back from it. I think we made a good first step."
The Thrashers, last in the Eastern Conference, didn't show much life outside of a couple of skirmishes involving Colby Armstrong until they forced Fleury to make 13 saves in the final period. The Thrashers lost their sixth in seven games.
Pittsburgh's 0-for-33 power-play slump, its longest since an eight-game streak in December 2003, ended late in the first period when Sykora redirected Ryan Whitney's pass from the right point. Whitney showed the Penguins' relief by dropping his head back and looking upward.
"It was a matter of time, but it was getting a little frustrating," said Whitney, who assisted on both power-play scores.
Sykora made it 2-0 at 12:43 of the second. Malkin controlled the puck after winning a faceoff and carried it to the net, where Sykora put a backhander past Kari Lehtonen for his 15th goal.
Malkin, the NHL's leading scorer with 63 points but held without a goal for a career-long nine games, appeared to score slightly less than three minutes later with a power-play slap shot from the right point. But Crosby's stick ticked the puck as it flew into the net for his 16th goal — and only the 11th by Pittsburgh during that time. Crosby was held to one goal in his previous seven games.
The Penguins, two games away from winning the Stanley Cup last spring, are 20-17-4 at the midpoint of their season after having only two full months off since August 2007.
Fedotenko gave his slumping team a lift a night after the Penguins lost 4-0 to the Rangers by dropping former Penguin Armstrong with a single punch only 1:27 into the game. But even this didn't quite work out — Fedotenko injured his hand on the punch and did not return.
"That sparked us a little bit, that was a pretty quick one," Crosby said. "Definitely, an emotional start like that helps the team."
