Chirps from Center Ice

So I haven’t blogged much this weekend, and the Penguins / Blue Jackets preseason game was on ROOT Sports filled with Penguins prospects and players tabbed for Wilkes-Barre duty at some point fairly soon, so here goes.

The Pittsburgh Penguins played their first preseason game Sunday evening and lost 5-4 in overtime.

Zach Sill and Brendan Mikkelson were the scratches tonight. With Pittsburgh already announcing the lineups for tomorrow and with them not on it, one could expect that Sill / Mikkelson could be sent to Wilkes-Barre soon.

:47 in to the first period, Beau Bennett lays a body on a guy, steals the puck, passes to James Neal who scores to make it 1-0.

Pens had a power play about halfway though. Newcomer Andrew Ebbett was orchestrating the power play unit like I haven’t seen in quite a while (from an AHL perspective) If Ebbett doesn’t stick in Pittsburgh, Wilkes-Barre will have a hell of a power play quarterback. He assisted on a Chuck Kobasew tally after the power play expired.

Columbus scored two goals on the power play in the period. One was on a tail end of a 5-on-3 where Ebbett was doing a fine job killing off the two man advantage. This is my first time paying any kind of real attention to him, my takeaway is that he is a very dynamic player.

Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond hits hard. The best inference I can give is like running into an oak tree.

Bobby Farnham checked a Blue Jackets player hard in the near corner late in the second period and went off favoring his lower body area to the dressing room. Turns out it was 6’4 229 pound Ilari Melart. As tweeted by the voice of the Wheeling Nailers DJ Abisalih, Farnham is not afraid of anyone. He did not return for the third period.

Shots were 26-12 Pittsburgh through two periods. Seemed a bit sluggish in parts in the second period, but Pittsburgh really did a good job of limiting Columbus’ chances on goal at Fleury.

To start the third, goaltenders Jeff Zatkoff and Oskar Dansk took over for Fleury, McElhinney respectively.

Adam Payerl and Ilari Melart had the games first fight after a goal mouth scrum in front of Dansk. A lot of clutching and grabbing, but a draw.

Zatkoff let in two quick goals. One in a scrum where it looked like to me at least that there was a Blue Jacket sitting on him by Mark Letestu (remember him?) The other on a Cam Atkinson glove high snipe on a rush.

Dustin Jeffrey (remember him??) scored a power play goal for the Penguins. Tom Kuhnhackl was out there slinging it around and had some nice passes. Kuhnhackl and Jeffrey later assisted on Chuck Kobasew’s second of the game to tie the game at 4-4.

Joe Vitale and James Wisniewski had the second fight and Wisniewski got his Gordie Howe hat trick.

Zatkoff had a game saving, sprawling save to preserve the 4-4 deadlock and to force overtime.

Brian Dumoulin took a shot up high and went off favoring something upper body late. With this really being a meaningless preseason game, he was not seen again.

Ryan Murray scored with 21.2 left in overtime off of a Penguins offensive zone turnover. Over analyzing here, but if Dumoulin hadn’t been injured, am I even typing this paragraph?

Pittsburgh plays tomorrow against Detroit, and that game won’t be televised. So I don’t think I will have a recap on that one.

EDIT: Dave Molinari had this to say about the statuses of Farnham and Dumoulin:

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Elsewhere…

Ex-Penguin Keven Veilleux was sent to AHL Portland in parent Phoenix’s first round of cuts.

Washington made cuts today too. Click here to see some names headed to Hershey.

There may be some cuts tomorrow in Pittsburgh. If there are, I will have a blog on it. If not, hopefully I have something else to blog about.