Pens tie high-flying Habs - February 1977

On February 16, 1977, Montreal came to town and the game was quickly shaping up to be your standard 1970s Canadiens-Penguins tilt: two quick goals by the Flying Frenchmen and an apparent blowout on the horizon. But for some strange reason, Pittsburgh decided to start playing. 

Pierre Larouche

Thirteen seconds after Pens goaltender Denis Herron let a bad one dribble by him to give Montreal their 2-0 lead, Rick Kehoe and Pierre Larouche broke in on a two-on-one. Kehoe used his teammate as a decoy and beat Ken Dryden cleanly. By the time the horn rang, the Penguins had built an improbable 3-2 lead, the last goal coming on another Larouche-Kehoe rush, with Pierre this time pulling the trigger. 

The teams traded goals in the second, giving the Penguin fans hope that the team might actually capture its first win against the Habs in their last 10 tries. Guy Lafleur, however, had other ideas. The superstar came into the Penguins zone on the right side early in the third and surprised Herron with a rocket of a shot, low on the stick side. 

There was no quit in the Penguins on this night, though, and it was only the incredible goaltending of Ken Dryden down the stretch that enabled the Canadiens to leave the Igloo with a point.

Pens break out, clobber Canucks 8-3

Thanks to some scoring from the more youthful part of their lineup, the Penguins exploded in the third period and demolished the visiting Vancouver Canucks 8-3 on January 4, 1978. This game review from the next day has a great shot of the Pens’ Rick Kehoe beating Canucks D-man Larry Goodenough (who surely had one of the greatest names of the era) and goaltender Curt Ridley (who had one of the best masks.) 

Cap carnage in 1975

As the Pens and Caps gear up for the Winter Classic, let's look back on one of the first battles between these rivals: March 15, 1975. The high-powered Pens put a licking on the expansion Capitals that night at the Igloo, firing 65 shots at the hapless Cap 'keepers en route to a 12-1 demolition.

This Post-Gazette article recaps the carnage, as well as another thrashing doled out the following night to the Kansas City Scouts, another expansion "sacrifice", as writer Bob Whitley described them. There's a nice pic of the KC goalie being beaten by Ron Schock, too.

And here's a report on the weekend goal-fest from the Beaver County Times, with comments from Rick Kehoe about his recent split with the Maple Leafs which brought him to Pittsburgh to begin a long relationship with the team.

There's also another nice pic from the Kansas City game, but why the paper's editors chose to display one of the Pens getting scored on during a weekend in which they scored 18 goals is beyond me!