Home Cooking: Mormina Leads Penguins To Game Five

When a team is facing elimination, like the Penguins were tonight, the team knows they need to rally around a certain play, a player or collective group. Tonight it was the Penguins veteran group, namely Warren Peters and captain Joey Mormina, who led by example.

Coming into tonight's game Mormina had just two points in 51 AHL playoff games, but he got three in the second period tonight, leading the Penguins to a 3-1 win in Game Four. Game Five is tomorrow night.

While Mormina attributed the performance to the lasagna his grandmother made him for lunch this afternoon, it was evident that getting pucks to the net and perhaps finding some puck luck at the right time propelled the Penguins to playing a Game Five in less than 24 hours.

Despite the slow start for the Penguins, who trailed 1-0 after the first period, they got it together in the middle frame led by a strong period from their captain.

Mormina started the play on the Penguins tying goal 6:25 into the 2nd period. Mormina found Payerl, who left a puck for Peters just above the face-off circle. Peters took the feed from Payerl and used a Bruins defenseman as a screen, timing the shot just right as it eluded Niklas Svedberg and got the Penguins rolling.

"We felt we played well tonight, Mormina said. "I just try to play my game. Offensively, just putting pucks on net."

Mormina did just that about ten minutes later when he took a shot on Svedberg from the left side. The shot was blocked, but went to the right side to a wide open Riley Holzapfel, who tapped it home to put the Penguins in front.

Mormina wasn't done there, getting his third assist of the period on another play where the Penguins captain got pucks to the net. Mormina floated a wrist shot from the point that Chad Kolarik tipped past Svedberg to keep the Penguins in front for good.

I feel that it's worth noting that there wasn't much of a difference in how the last two games were played. Surely the end result was different, but the effort and intensity was there in both contests.

"I think we got a couple bounces our way today," forward Jayson Megna said when I caught up with post-game. "I think our work ethic was the same. We knew we had to just keep working hard and stick to our game and good things would happen."

Megna, as well as guys like Brian Gibbons, Zach Sill and Warren Peters have made strides on the penalty kill, which has held the Bruins top line scoreless in two straight games.

"We had to make some adjustments there in the past few games," Megna said. "We have come out and executed pretty well. Lots of guys are blocking shots and Brad is coming up with unbelievable saves."

The Penguins get right back at it tomorrow night in front of the home fans, looking to send the series back to Providence.