Pens need major bounce-back game from Fleury
Fairly or not, the blame for Pittsburgh’s 5-0 loss to Detroit in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals has fallen squarely on Pens goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury.
After stopping 64 of 68 shots in the two games in Pittsburgh, Fleury allowed five goals on 21 shots on Saturday, including three goals to a Detroit power play that produced just once in 10 tries in the first four games of the series.
“He’s going to bounce back. He’s a good goalie,” defenseman Kris Letang said. “He has a lot of competitor in him and that’s good. We know that he’s going to be back and he’s going to be good. He has a lot of time to forget about it. It’s going to be a new game.”
Pens coach Dan Bylsma indicated that it really wasn’t his goalie’s fault and that there was no doubt he would stay in net for Tuesday’s Game 6.
“It wasn’t his fault, the situation we were in,” said Bylsma. “Marc is the guy who is going in for Game 6.
We believe in him, I know he’s the type of guy who is going to be ready to go for Game 6. He’s going to be focused and he’s going to want to go out there and play the best game of the series for Game 6.”
Pittsburgh is a -130 money line favorite on WagerWeb.com to extend this series to a seventh game.
The Penguins feel they can recover from Saturday’s ugly loss, especially heading back home for Game 6.
“We’ve been through a lot of things,” center Sidney Crosby said. “We haven’t had a big loss like this maybe in the playoffs, but we’ve been through a lot we’ve had to bounce back from.”
However, that Game 5 domination was also Detroit’s first game with Pavel Datsyuk, arguably the Wings’ best player, in this series. He had sat out since the final few games of the West Finals with an injury.
“I thought he was really, really good,” said Dan Cleary, who was Datsyuk’s linemate Saturday. “He handled the puck well. He was skating well. He’s physical.”
The odds are now heavily in the Wings’ favor to clinch their second straight Cup and fifth in 12 seasons.
Teams that win Game 5 to take a 3-2 lead in a best-of-seven in the Finals have won the title 14 of 19 times (73.7 percent).
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