Penguins 5 - Flyers 4: Malkin Bowl!

It's funny...we got a place called Malkin Bowl here in Vancouver (an outdoor theatre place in Stanley Park), yet it described what happened to Evgeni Malkin in his first NHL preseason game as he got smoked by John LeClair in one of the biggest bloopers this calendar year. If anyone knows where I can find the highlight online, let me know!

Game Recap:

The Pittsburgh Penguins closed out their Canadian Maritimes trip on Wednesday with a 5-4 win over the Philadelphia Flyers at the Moncton Coliseum.

However, the team got a couple scares along the way as Evgeni Malkin and Mark Recchi were both injured in separate plays and were taken to local hospitals on the evening.

Malkin, the Penguins’ star rookie, had a nasty collision with John LeClair 1:02 into the second period. Malkin fell awkwardly face-first onto the ice and left the game with an upper body injury.

Meanwhile, Recchi absorbed the brunt of a high stick to the face early in the contest. He remained on the ice and played for a while, but also left the game to be evaluated at a local hospital.

“Malkin will be evaluated further [Thursday] by doctors in Pittsburgh. We’ll just see how he’s doing and go from there,” Penguins General Manager Ray Shero said. “I was happy he got up because it looked [bad] with the way he went down.

Perhaps it did look worse than it felt. Malkin will be out day-to-day with a bruised ego for sure.


As for Crosby...

The Flyers grabbed a 4-3 advantage with a short-handed goal 2:54 into the third.

Crosby tied it 11 seconds later with a highlight-reel goal. He went coast-to-coast with the puck, blew past a defender and headed towards the end boards. He fired a shot at goaltender Martin Houle from behind the post and it bounced off his leg and trickled into the goal. Gonchar assisted on the play.

Late in the third period, Armstrong put the Penguins ahead, 5-4, when he took Crosby’s pass and backhanded it into the net.