Mikael Samuelsson scored twice and Chris Osgood made 19 saves as the Detroit Red Wings defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins 4-0 on Saturday in the opening game of the Stanley Cup Finals.
Daniel Cleary and Henrik Zetterberg also scored for the Red Wings, who host game two of the National Hockey League’s best-of-seven championship series today.
Osgood notched his second shutout of the postseason by turning aside 12 shots in the first period, four in the second and three in the third. The Red Wings outshot the Penguins 25-7 over the final two periods.
Stanley Cup Final game impressed with the caliber of the opposition.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 32 saves for the Penguins, who were 0-for-5 on the power play and gave up a shorthanded goal.
Sweden’s Samuelsson opened the scoring with just under seven minutes left in the second, after Pittsburgh’s Tyler Kennedy and Jordan Staal went off for a line change.
Samuelsson skated down the left wing and went behind the net before emerging near the right goalpost. As Fleury tried to move across the crease, Samuelsson banked the puck off his left pad and into the net at 13:01.
“I just took a shot at it,” Samuelsson said. “They went to the net. I couldn’t really cut in in front of the net, so I had to go behind. And I guess Fleury committed to me a little bit. So I took a chance to throw it at the net, and it went in.”
He doubled the lead 2:16 into the third period, notching his second multiple-goal performance of the playoffs.
As he and Penguins defenseman Hal Gill collided in the left corner, the puck squirted toward the front of the net.
Fleury poked it to Evgeni Malkin in the bottom of the left faceoff circle, but Malkin couldn’t control it. Samuelsson pounced, and fired the puck past Fleury.
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