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Coach Wilson under attack!

The day of Game 3 in Pittsburgh, this analysis piece of the series thus far by Post-Gazette Pens beat writer Bob Whitley strongly called into question the coaching tactics of Pittsburgh bench boss Johnny Wilson. In a scathing attack, the scribe took Wilson to task for supposedly not unleashing a fleet-footed offense on the Bruins, among other errors. This despite the Penguins pulling off one of the playoffs' early surprises by coming out of the tough Boston Garden with a split.

They never said being a coach was easy!

Game 2: Pens can't "bar the door" vs. Bruins

After their surprising victory against the mighty Bruins in Game One, the Penguins came out trying to play the same style that got them that impressive win two nights earlier: play tight defense, try to capitalize on the odd offensive chance, and - most of all - pray that goalie Greg Millen can keep standing on his head.

Well, it worked OK for the first period, but not much longer, as the Beantowners evened things up rather easily, skating off with a 4-1 win and a 1-1 series tie in their best-of-five 1980 preliminary series round.

Here's a wire article with some reaction from Pens D-man Ron Stackhouse and Bruin goalkeeper Gerry Cheevers.

Penguins-Bruins 1980: Game 1

In Game One, the Penguins shocked the Bruins and the mere 9,725 Boston spectators who came out to see what was supposed to be a ho-hum drubbing of the visitors. The rejuvinated Pens, coming off a disappointing end to a disappointing regular season, withstood a 38-shot Bruin barrage to claim a 4-2 victory.

Goalie Greg Millen, in his first-ever playoff action, stood on his head, stopping enough of Boston's 20 third-period howitzers to give the underdog Pens an inconceivable 1-0 series lead.

This article from the April 9, 1980 Post-Gazette summarizes the tilt, while the others around it contain some nice quotes from the victors' locker room deep in the bowels of the old Boston Garden.

This game was also the playoff debut of Raymond Bourque, the future Hall of Famer. He fired an incredible nine shots on Millen - who stopped them all.

1980 Playoffs: Penguins-Bruins

Over the next few posts I'm going to look at the Penguins 1980 Preliminary Round battle with the Boston Bruins, which turned out to be anything but what most fans expected it to be: a quick Bruin whitewashing.

This article from the April 7, 1980 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, written on the eve of the series opener, looks at the state of the Igloo-dwellers at the end of a disappointing regular season that saw them finish seven games below the .500 mark. The team could hardly have felt great about itself after finishing the campaign with a 9-1 abomination at home against the Buffalo Sabres.

Add in the fact that the Big Bad Bruins had: a) finished a whopping 32 points better than the Pens; b) swept Pittsburgh four-straight in the playoffs the year before; and c) had gone deep into the playoffs the previous two seasons (Finals and Semi-Finals), and the Penguins' fate seemed sealed.

But, as all sports fans know, anything can happen. And something close to "anything" was about to...

Lemieux debut

Believe it or not, Penguins' season ticket sales fell during the summer after they drafted Mario Lemieux (1984), as this short piece from the Montreal Gazette relates. The article also reveals that 66's first game in Pittsburgh was in danger of not selling out. It's funny reading the comments of then-Pens PR man Paul Steigerwald, now the team's TV play-by-play voice, about the situation, basically heaping the blame on the visiting Canucks. It's doubtful that in today's tight-lipped, spic-and-span world of hockey PR you'd hear such bluntness. Would be nice, though.

Simmer wins it at the Forum

In their first 20 seasons, the Penguins managed to win a grand total of 2 games at the Montreal Forum. No, that isn't a misprint: 2 wins. But in January 1988, the Penguins managed to pull out their third victory at the hallowed hall of hockey when Charlie Simmer banged in a Mario Lemieux rebound at the side of the Canadiens' cage in overtime for a 4-3 win. Here's a wrap-up of that game from a Toledo newspaper. Goalie Frank Pietrangelo was spectacular, making 40-plus saves.

I remember that OT goal like it was yesterday because I watched the whole game on Hockey Night in Canada with my brother, a Habs fan. Winning in Montreal signified a bit of a turning point to me; Pittsburgh now had Mario and Paul Coffey, recently arrived from Edmonton, and some other up-and-coming prospects. It seemed that good times were finally ahead, and despite missing the playoffs again that year (the sixth season in row), those good times certainly weren't far off...