The good times kept rolling for the Penguins on November
22, 1972 when, playing at home against the St. Louis Blues, they set an NHL
record that still stands to this day.
The game was a typically close battle
between the bitter expansion rivals for the first two periods, with the Pens
holding a 5-4 lead with a little over eight minutes to go. Bryan Hextall widened
the lead by tipping in a Jack Lynch slap shot at 12:00. Jean Pronovost then
took a feed from Greg Polis 12 seconds later and buried it past Blues goalie
Wayne Stephenson. Al McDonough completed a hat trick at 13:40 off a pass from
Syl Apps to make it a rout at 8-4.
The crowd of 12,405 had barely started
celebrating that marker when Ken Schinkel lit the lamp only nine seconds later.
The shell-shocked Blues could not pull themselves together enough to stop
Schock from adding a tenth goal only 18 seconds later.
The traditionally goal-starved Penguins
had scored five goals in only two minutes and seven seconds, easily
obliterating the previous mark for fastest five goals by one team of three
minutes, forty-six seconds set by the Rangers in 1942. The fourth and fifth of those
Penguin goals, only nine seconds apart, set a new team record for fastest two
goals, and the overall tally of 10, in a 10-4 win, marked the first time the
Pens had gone into double figures.
“Our guys were driving,” observed GM
Jack Riley. “They seemed to have an obsession like Rocket Richard used to have
to get down toward the goal and to get a shot. Everything seemed to be going
our way.”
Excerpted from The Pittsburgh Penguins: The First 25 Years by Greg Enright, available at bit.ly/2OGZeYO or amzn.to/3cna4N4
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