Playoffs 2nd Round

Not much news in the Pens world, but there are still four playoff series going on.

West

Vancouver and Nashville are tied 1-1 heading to Nashville. The Canucks pulled out a 1-0 win in game one, Luongo with the shutout, but the Preds came back to take game two in double overtime, 2-1. Pekka Rinne will be the man to determine the series.

   

San Jose has a 2-0 series lead over Detroit with a pair of 2-1 victories, the first coming in overtime. Rookie Benn Ferriero scored the overtime winner in game one in his first NHL Playoff game on his birthday. The goalies have been strong in this series as well. Actually all of the goalies have been pretty solid in these playoffs, except for the Flyers rotating door of Boucher, Leighton, and Bobrovsky, none of which have gotten the job done.

East

Tampa Bay holds a 2-0 series lead over Washington. The Capitals think that they're supposed to lose to the Lightning since that's what the Pens did. Caps are capable of coming back, but Backstrom and Ovechkin will have to step it up. Dwayne Roloson is showing that it wasn't just the Pens' lack of offense that made him look good.

Boston dominated Philadelphia 7-3 in game one and squeaked out a 3-2 overtime win last night for a 2-0 series lead as well. James vanRiemsdyk almost took over game two, getting two goals for, but Tim Thomas wouldn't let him finish it, making 52 saves in game two. The Flyers still can't get consistent goaltending. 43 year-old Mark Recchi is playing like he's 20. The best thing that's come from this series was the God Bless America before game two.

Pens Affiliates

In the AHL Playoffs, Wilkes-Barre is down 2 games to 1 to the Charlotte Checkers in the conference semifinals, and in the ECHL, Wheeling is tied 1-1 with the Kalamazoo Wings in the conference finals.

By the way, USA