Last night was a busy evening for the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Islanders. Both teams previously met last week where Islanders goalie Rick DiPietro suffered his 1,249th injury in his career when he was knocked out by Brent Johnson in one punch. Both Atlantic Division foes had circled last night’s return engagement and it was anticipated it would be good, physical, old-time hockey circa 1979. That is probably why 12,888 showed up to watch one of the worse teams in the league play against a team without Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
New York was the team who did the spanking both via fighting and lighting up the lamp as they beat the Pittsburgh 9-3. They haven’t allowed that many goals since losing 9-0 at Tampa Bay November 8, 2003. Pittsburgh was also playing without Matt Cooke, Chris Kunitz, Mike Comrie and Mark Letestu as Cooke is serving a suspension and the others are injured.
The teams combined for 65 penalties that totaled 346 minutes and including 10 ejections. There were 15 fighting majors and 20 misconducts in the game that set records for both teams for most combined penalty minutes and left few players around to finish it.
Here’s a recap of the larger-scaled fights that occurred in last night’s game, courtesy of hockeyfights.com
Fight at 5:21 of the Second Period
Fight at 4:47 of the Third Period, highlighted by Brent Johnson taking on Micheal Haley.
