The Penguins were embarrassed 5-1 by the Senators in Game 3 of the NHL's Eastern Conference finals Wednesday, and now Pittsburgh goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury is under fire after a rough outing.
Fleury allowed four goals on the Senators' first nine shots in the first period before he was pulled in favor of Matt Murray. Fleury's struggles could cause the Penguins to start Murray in Game 4 on Friday.
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After the game, Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said he hadn't thought about who will get the start.
“I haven’t even given any consideration to that at this point,” he told reporters. “We give up four goals as quickly as we did, sometimes when you make a change, it’s for more than one reason. … It’s a little bit of a wake-up call, I guess, for the whole group.”
Sullivan is right. The Penguins were sloppy on both ends of the ice.
“We played like [expletive],” Matt Cullen told reporters, via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “No excuses. That’s the bottom line. We didn’t battle. We didn’t work as hard as we needed to. It’s the conference finals. To have that kind of effort is pretty tough to stomach.”
GAME CENTER: Penguins-Senators Game 3 stats
Cullen, naturally, wouldn't throw Fleury under the bus.
“'Flower' has carried us here,” Cullen said. “He’s played so well for us. That makes it even worse that we kind of hung him out to dry. Bottom line is we didn’t play well. We have to figure it out here as a group. We have to understand that it’s not going to be easy. We have to put our best effort out there. We have to win battles. We have to fight a little bit. We didn’t tonight.”
Cullen is right. Much of what happened Wednesday wasn't Fleury's fault.
The first two goals came off bad bounces. On the first, by Mike Hoffman, the puck caromed off the end boards and Fleury lost it. On the second, by Marc Methot, the puck deflected into the net off defenseman Ian Cole's skate.
On the goal by Derick Brassard that made it 3-0, Brassard received a backdoor pass alone in front and tapped it in. On Zach Smith's goal to make it 4-0, Smith got a lucky bounce right onto his stick and he had too much speed for Fleury to get over to make a save on the wraparound.
Murray did well in relief, stopping 19 of 20 shots. Kyle Turris' goal early in the third period was the only blemish.
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Before Wednesday, Fleury had stopped 85 of the last 87 shots against him in the series. He came into Wednesday with a 2.07 goals-against average and two shutouts in the postseason after replacing an injured Murray just before the start of the first round.
Murray, meanwhile, was the Penguins' playoff hero last season and is likely the team's goalie of the future.
Sullivan, then, is faced with a tough decision, one that could make or break the Penguins as they try to return to the Stanley Cup Final.