Sidney Crosby scored the first goal of the 2012 playoffs on Wednesday night as he fired a backhand shot over Ilya Bryzgalov’s glove less than four minutes into Game 1. The Pittsburgh Penguins’ captain didn’t even wait that long to make it 1-0 against the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 2, as he fired home a bombastic one-timer just 15 seconds in.
Crosby’s lightning-fast goal ties Greg Malone (Ryan’s dad, by the way) as the fastest in team playoff history, by the way.
Naturally, the other half of the story is the natural questions that will come about Bryzgalov’s state of mind - even if it’s kind of tough to fault him for that tally. (And just as this post was about to publish, Chris Kunitz deflected a puck by Bryzgalov, making it 2-0.)
Then again, many of the Detroit Red Wings’ goals were of the variety that not many human netminders could stop, but that didn’t stop from Breezy looking awful at times in the last two playoff series. His Phoenix Coyotes teams had a tendency to fall behind - particularly in last year’s ugly sweep - but the only bit of good news is that the Flyers obviously have more firepower to make comebacks. They’re also flat-out used to coming from behind; Sam Carchidi points out that this is the ninth time the Flyers have been down 2-0 in the last 14 games.
To give you a little perspective on Crosby’s already-impressive body of work in the playoffs, try this on for size: his 32 career postseason goals ties Ron Francis for fourth all-time in Penguins franchise history.