The preseason game of Saturday evening between the Columbus Blue Jackets and Pittsburgh Penguins was no ordinary pre -season match. It was the return of Marc-Andre Fleury to Pittsburgh and his last NHL promotion.
The night turned into everything that makes hockey a great sport.
Fleury came in the third period in the third period and stopped all eight shots with which he was confronted. Rickard Rakell and Sidney Crosby took care of the attack In a victory of 4-1 Penguins on the Blue Jackets.
After Regulation, the teams held a shootout. Then Fleury got his moment on a round around the ice rink with both teams that celebrated his career and inheritance.
Summary
Regarding the match itself, the Blue Jackets scored the first goal of the match at 4:08 PM when Luca del Belluz finished a Yegor Chinakhov pass. That turned out to be the only goal of the first period.
The Penguins Momentum took over from the start of the second period. They scored twice in the second period, including Rakell’s first goal with 1.6 seconds left in the period to bring the score to 2-1. Crosby scored at 5:20 to even the score for that.
The penguins added two more in the third. Elvis Merzlikins, who was good in Saturday night’s game, made a bad pass that became an easy goal for Ville Koivunen. Merzlikins played the entire game and stopped 32 of 35 in the morning.
Rakell scored in an empty net to bring the score to 4-1. Then the teams played the shootout.
The penguins sent Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang out. They didn’t score. Del Bel Belluz was the third shooter of the Blue Jackets. He defeated Fleury that caused heavy anger of the crowd. Then Fleury took his lap.
Del Bel Belluz admitted to have some mixed emotions, because he goes down as the last player who scored on Fleury. “It was clear that I scored. But yes, I felt that I had ruined the party there for him.” He further said that he is expected to be booed every time he returns to Pittsburgh in the future.
The atmosphere was electric for a pre -season match. Every time Fleury de Puck hit in the third period, there were loud cheers.
At various points in the night the crowd could be heard to sing ‘another year’ and ‘Thank you Fleury’. The night met the moment. The Penguins and their fans had to celebrate one of the legends of the game.
The Blue Jackets still have two games left in their preseason, both against the Capitals in Washington. Head coach Dean Evason said that the cutbacks will come on Sunday to bring the team to one group plus a few bubble players. Evason also admitted that it was ‘fair to say’ that the competition on the bubble was close by given the number of matches they played this preseason.
The next for the Penguins is a match in Detroit on Monday evening.
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