Pens lose 3-1 to Lightning

In the first of several correspondent reports from live game attending is this one from last Saturday, October 15, 2005, at Pittsburgh's Mellon Arena.

It was good to see hockey back, and this game marked a standing room only sell-out of 17,132 fans. The game started off well enough for the Pens, holding Tampa to only 6 shots in the first period, but managed to trail 1-0 after 1.

The 2nd period might have well been dubbed "lets keep the pens in the box" period, as the Pens spent much of the period shorthanded. It was during one of those penalties that a Tampa player committed what should have been called a high sticking penalty, where his stick struck Pens player Mark Recchi in the face. 10 seconds later, Tampa scores on the Powerplay to go up 2-0. Tampa added a third goal in the last minute of the 2nd period to end the period up 3-0.

The Pens owned the third period, but could not manage more than a single goal in the first few minutes from Ziggy Palffy, assisted by Sidney Crosby. The goal extended the point-streaks of both players, now to 6 games for Crosby to start his career, ringing in at 2g, 7a on the season. The Recchi-Palffy-Crosby line has worked out really well so far, and was the best line for the Pens in the game. The Malone-LeClair-Lemieux line got to that point in the third period, but it was too little too late.

OVERALL OBSERVATIONS:
The crackdown against the trap was not successful in this game, as Tampa trapped all game long. The penalty calls were one-sided, and the missed calls or bad calls energized the fans in a way the Igloo had not seen in ages. The Pens will get better and win games, as evidenced by their comeback against the Flyers the night before, when they were down 5-1 in the 2nd before tying the game at 5 with 8 mins to go in regulation. Through six games, they have lost twice, but this loss was much better than their opening 5-1 loss at New Jersey.

And the place is infant friendly, and ours had fun, was awake the whole time, and has added "hockey" and "lee mooo" to her vocabulary...