Game 53- Tampa Bay Lightning @ Penguins

The Penguins hope to redeem themselves from a failed road trip as they host the Tampa Bay Lightning tonight at 7:30. The Bolts sit at the 12th spot in the conference and aren’t a threat in the standings. Their last three games are losses, but just before that they were on a 3 game winning streak. Their play has been inconsistent at best.

The real threats are Vinny Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis, the dynamic first-line duo. The combined +/- of the Bolts is an embarrassing -74. All in all, there is not much scoring depth to the team, though TB shut the Pens out in their last game in December. Ryan Whitney returned the last time the Pens played the Bolts and so far he’s been lackluster compared to his former seasons with the Penguins, taking an humiliating -4 last night.

The Penguins’ defense needs to be kicked into gear tonight or they can’t hope to win, even against the Bolts. Mark Eaton is the only one showing up for the Penguins defense with occasional sightings of Rob Scuderi. On the offense, however, the Pens have found a bright new talent. Last night, Luca Caputi scored his first NHL goal on his first NHL shift. The last Penguin to do that was someone you all might have heard of, a little someone named Mario Lemieux. Tonight, he (Caputi, that is) kicks Satan out of the lineup for the Pens and rockets up to the second line. Meanwhile, Pascal Dupuis, who can’t seem to buy a goal since the All-Star break will play on the fourth line

TB has been dealing with a ton of injuries recently. They have injuries to Gary Roberts, Jamie Heward, Paul Szczechura, Marek Malik and Olaf Kolzig.
Meanwhile, the Pens are still without Ruslan Fedotenko, Sergei Gonchar and Mike Zigomanis.

Penguins-

Cooke-Crosby-Malkin
Caputi-Staal-Sykora
Minard-Talbot-Kennedy
Dupuis-Thomas-Godard

Orpik-Scuderi
Eaton-Letang
Goligoski-Whitney

Fleury

Lightning-

Proposal-Lecavalier-St. Louis
Malone-Halpern-Artyukhin
Downie-Stamkos-Recchi
Pettinger-Craig-Hall

Ranger-Meszaros
Eminger-Krajicek
Malik-Murphy

Smith

While I’m at it, I might as well say that these lines are pretty much not what’s going to happen in the game. Maxie will probably move up to play with Sid and Cookie. Staal will take Maxie’s place in the third line and Geno will most likely play with Sykie and Caputi, since that line played the best last night.

Do it.

LET’S GO PENS!