Everyone figured this was going to be entertaining hockey.
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The 2016 Stanley Cup Finals got underway from Pittsburgh on Monday night with the Penguins and Sharks kicking off the final best of seven game series of the 2016 playoffs. The over is 3-0-1 in Penguins last 4 Wednesday games and the under is 4-0 in Penguins last 4 Stanley Cup Finals games while Pittsburgh are 5-0 in their last 5 home games vs. a team with a road winning % of greater than.600.
Near the end of the second period, San Jose Sharks star Joe Thornton and Pittsburgh Penguins icon Evgeni Malkin were both penalized for trading glares, slashes and a few seconds of unpleasant conversation. Rust played one shift afterward before exiting the game for good and was deemed to be day-to-day with an upper-body injury. “The one thing he does bring to these respected lines is he’s a center iceman and takes faceoffs in the defensive zone”. Letang chased it down and tried to throw the puck in front of the net, but Burns two-handed it to the corner, where Carl Hagelin gathered it and tapped it back to Letang.
Replays of the exchange showed that Burns lost his stick on the initial shot by Letang, before the puck went behind the net. Matt Murray – who like Rust and Sheary spent a significant amount of time this season with the team’s American Hockey League affiliate in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton – finished with 24 saves. With those six goals, he set a franchise record for goals in the playoffs by a rookie.
Rust got the ball rolling for the Penguins at 12:46 of the first, batting in the rebound of a shot by Justin Schultz that deflected off Sharks defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic directly to Rust.
Key stats: Pavelski has a league-high 13 goals in 18 playoff games.
The question is, can Rust can stay on that roll? He did not return after that.
The Penguins had to deal with losing Rust in the third period after Marleau caught him in the head with an open-ice hit just inside the San Jose blue line.
Whether the Penguins will have right winger Bryan Rust for that game wasn’t immediately clear. The Penguins had 21 blocked shots. That’s what gave Bonino the opportunity to finish the game.
Crosby picked up the assist on the second goal. Sidney Crosby gained control of the puck along the half-wall and made a laser-precise pass to Sheary in the right circle for a shot that flew under the crossbar.
Mostly, Game 1 was a blur: The decisive sequence with three minutes remaining, the whirling dervish of a beginning, the entire 48 hours in Pittsburgh before the puck dropped for the first championship round game in Sharks history. “The third, we didn’t play like we did in the second long enough”. It was a tough first (period).
He gathered his wits – or what was left of them – and gradually pulled himself to his feet and then the bench.
Kunitz, though, had taken a hard hit in the next-to-last game of the regular season, against Washington.
He has looked pretty good lately, though.
Pittsburgh struck first, got hit back and then landed the knockout blow.
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“I don’t think he’s as good as he is by accident”, Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said.
