From: lli+@cs.cmu.edu (Lori Iannamico)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.hockey
Subject: Pens-1 Rangers-7
Keywords: Revolving goalies.
Date: 17 Apr 92 16:00:00 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

The Pens lost their final regular season game 7-1 to the NY Rangers, who
have finished the season with 50 victories (Cool!), and 105 points, the best
in the NHL this season.

Prior to the start of the game, the Rangers were awarded the President's 
Trophy.  I noticed that John Ziegler was booed during the presentation.  I
thought that was pretty funny.

The game was meaningless to the Pens, and they took the opportunity to rest
Mario Lemieux, Tom Barrasso, Ulf Samuelsson and Larry Murphy.  Rick Tocchet
was supposed to be rested, but he asked to play the game.

Being a meaningless game also allowed interim coach Scotty Bowman to institute
a strange goalie rotation.  On the average of about every 5 minutes, Bowman
would change goalies.  Wregget started in the net, played a little over 5 
minutes, and then was pulled for Young.  Young played about the same amount,
and was yanked for Wregget.  This went on the entire game.  Bowman had said
before the game he was planning to do this, in fact the Rangers' offical stat
sheet had the goaltending duo listed as the "Pittsburgh goaltending platoon."
But no one believed he'd actually put them on a 5 minute rotation.  Bowman
said he did it to get both goalies a reasonable amount of work.

It was really strange to see.  It even caught the Pens announcers off guard
at times.  Bowman carried the 5 minute rotating bit so far that he at one point
changed goalies while the Pens were breaking to the Rangers end.

With the constant changing of goalies, I'm surprised the Rangers didn't score
more.  As it was, Young gave up 3 goals on 30 shots (He didn't play too badly)
and Wregget gave up 4 on 13.  Wregget was having a much harder time adjusting
to the platooning than Young.  Young has the ability to play cold, and seemed
to be able to keep his concentration better than Wregget.

The Rangers played well last night.  They took the game seriously.  The Pens
were content to skate around and at some points, to goon it up.  Bowman even
went so far as to put 3 goons (Chychrun, Caufield and Jennings) on the power
play unit.  Caufield played a lot because he was trying to score his first
goal of season.  He failed.

The first Ranger goal, suprisingly enough, didn't come until 18:19 of the 
first, and it was a power play goal. James Patrick (Kerr) blew a shot past
Young's glove side to make it 1-0.

The second period was filled with fights and penalties.  The first period
was physical, but nothing got out of hand.  Grant Jennings and Tie Domi squared
off in the first, but that was about it. (Domi won.  Jennings can't fight his
way out of a wet paper bag.)  But the second was ridiculous.

Kevin Stevens got the first penalty of the second.  With that he has become the
first player in league history to score at least 50 goals, 100 points and earn
250 penalty minutes.  Then the period degenerated into a lot of fighting and
chippy play, so much that it would take too much time to go into it. So you
can check the box score of your favorite local daily to get the scoop.  I'll
just cover the scoring.

At 3:44 in the second Brian Turcotte (Gartner, Amonte) shot from the right 
point, through a crowd and beat Wregget on the far side.  And at 19:01 the
Rangers scored on another power play chance.  Brian Leetch was standing by the 
net to the left of Wendell Young.  Leetch passed the puck between Young(who
had gone down to cover a shot) and Phil Bourque (who had gone down to block
the pass and failed) to a waiting Darren Turcotte who knocked it into an open
net. (Messier had the other assist.)

In the third, the Rangers scored four more times.  At 2:23 Brian Leetch
(unassisted) just blasted a shot from near the left circle over the head of
a ducking Wregget.  At 10:07 Darren Turcotte (Gartner, Leetch) blew it past
Wregget again.  And at 15:06 Sergei Nemchinov (Patrick, Leetch) beat Wregget
on the glove side again.  

Kevin Stevens (Roberts, Trottier) spoiled John Vanbiesbrouck's shutout bid.
(Lost in all the trash was the fact that Vanbiesbrouck played an excellent
game.). This was at 16:08.   Mike Gartner(Patrick)ended the scoring at 18:13
when he beat Young with a wraparound on the shortside.

Most notable to me was that Jim Paek finally got the chance to play.  Paul
Steigerwald was saying that Paek was still having trouble with his broken
finger.  Although he had surgery, he was still having difficulty rehabilitating
the injury.

Shots:  Pgh: 10-8-10: 28, NYR: 14-18-11: 43

Scratches: Tom Barrasso, Mario Lemieux, Ulf Samuelsson, Larry Murphy, Peter
Taglianetti.

Lori 
Contact for the Penguins
lli+@cs.cmu.edu