On the night the Pittsburgh Penguins raised the new banner for the 2009 Stanley Cup championship they went out and handled their business beating the New York Rangers 3-2.
Conn Smythe winner Evgeni Malkin got things started off quickly for the Cup Champs scoring on power play 7:48 into the first period on shot that he deflected into the net from Sergei Gonchar giving the Pens a 1-0 lead. The Rangers tied it up 10 minutes later on a goal scored by Chris Drury.
Sidney Crosby would break the tie in the second period forcing a 3-0n-1 with teammates Bill Guerin and Chris Kunitz but Kris Letang who was trailing on the rush was the one who fed the puck to Crosby on a rebound in front of the net for his first goal of the season. One minute later MMMRRRRRRRR. KENNEDY Tyler Kennedy would put the Pens ahead for good on another shot that was deflected into the net and giving Pittsburgh a 3-1 lead.
The Rangers would attempt a comeback as Marian Gaborik scored to make the score 3-2 less than 6 minutes into the third period but Marc-Andre Fleury did everything he could after that to preserve the win for Pittsburgh. Fleury finished with 25 saves in the season debut.
On Saturday night the Pittsburgh Penguins traveled to New York to take on the Islanders and they got all they could get form last seasons worst team being taken to a shootout but they eventually pulled it out with 4-3 victory.
Sid the Kid got things started for the Pens scoring the first goal of the game taking a long cross ice pass from Ruslan Fedotenko, crashing the net and squeaking the puck past the goalie for 1-0 lead. The Islanders would tie things up on a 5-on-3 goal from Mark Streit.
In the second period the #1 pick overall in the recent draft, John Tavares paid immediate dividends for the Islanders scoring his first career goal on a power play to give New York a 2-1 lead.
In the third period Mark Eaton would tie things up on assists by Kris Letang and Crosby but the less than 30 seconds later the Islanders would regain the lead on Trent Hunter goal. Ruslan Fedotenko would tie the game up again with less then four minutes to go in regulation wristing off the skate of an Islander defender.
In the overtime neither team could do anything and the teams would go to a shoot out. Kris Letang and Sidney Crosby scored goals in the shoot out and Marc-Andre Fleury turned aside both attempts by New York to pick an important 2 points in the early season. Fleury stopped 25 shots for the second consecutive night.
Crosby recorded his 400th point of his career becoming the fifth fastest player all time to reach that milestone needing only 292 games. The Penguins improved to 2-0 on the season.
GO PENGUINS!
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