The Penguins and Islanders met at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum for game 6 of their first round series Saturday night. Not to give away too many spoilers for those of you seeing the game for the first time through this post, but....
Yeah, the Pens won.
The Pens won and spared their fans 20 hours or so of gut wrenching times waiting for a game 7 that would have been played Sunday night back in Pittsburgh.
More personally for Knitting Lady and me, the Pens won to extend our own "winning streak" to 10 games, and saved us from making the long drive back to Pittsburgh for that aforementioned game 7 that, thankfully, will never be.
Instead we get to drive home and start working on our game plan for round 2 and the Pens' next opponent, the Ottawa Senators (it's an eight and a half hour drive for us to Ottawa...hmmmm), just as Bylsma and Co. will be working on theirs.
Until then, we get to relax.
Just a little.
For now, we savor this victory.
Check out the photos after the jump.
Warm-up:
Apparently, fans on the Island were getting a little sick of Tavares and Nabakov. Only explanation I can think of for all the "no diving" signs. Also, one Islander fan had a special message.
Interesting that you can't spell "believe" without "LIE".
Anthem:
Let's get it on!
Pens got into early trouble, so Disco used the timeout. Good call, but the Isles' domination everywhere but on the scoreboard continued most of the night.
Tavares got the Isles on the board first but Iginla soon tied it off the set-up from Crosby.
New York regained the lead in the final minute of the period. Disco didn't look thrilled heading into the room down 2-1.
Despite the two Islander goals in the first, solid Vokoun was solid once again.
Pretty sure Cookie just wanted to congratulate Tavares on his Hart Trophy nomination.
Dupuis got the lone goal in the second period, evening the score at 2-2. I would have been a lot earlier getting a shot of the celebration but apparently I was a little busy trying to join in.
h/t to fourteenstars for finding this pic on tumblr, origin unknown.
Vokoun continued to be a wall for the rest of the second period.
3rd Period:
The Islanders didn't take long regaining the lead in the third on a pretty play by Aucoin setting up Grabner. If I'm remembering correctly, this was made possible by an awful turnover by my boy, Letang.
Paul Martin managed to tie things up with just over five minutes remaining on a play that I managed to get zero pictures of. This is the reality of playoff hockey. Sometimes the "being a fan" part takes precedence over trying to get a good pic.
Anyway, it was a huge moment in the game obviously as it looked for a while like the Islanders would be able to milk that one-goal lead all the way to forcing a game seven, but it was not to be that easy.
The Pens seemed a little relieved to have an overtime period to look forward to.
Fourth period:
The Isles put on some pressure in the extra frame and managed to put three shots on Vokoun, but then the Pens got it going. Geno made a nice play to keep it deep in the Islanders' zone and he and TK had something going down low before the puck made its way back to Orpik at the point. Not sure if his shot hit something on the way in but it found the back of the net.
The celebration was on.
I want to have respect for the Islanders and the way they played tough and everything, but I don't like them or most of their fans. So I'll just say HA HA, better luck next year (but not really).
This shot didn't come out great, but I like it. Kind of looks like Sid saying to himself "yeah, we got one under our belts, but there's a long way to go".
More pics to come in the second round.
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