Happy Sunday everyone. We’re kicking it back to important events on a sleepy Sunday and there’s a lot going on for May 10th in your Penguin history books to look back on and remember.
2001: Kasparaitis the hero
It’s sometimes said that a playoff OT goal can come from the most unlikely of sources, and it didn’t get much more unlikely than defenseman Darius Kasparaitis scoring on a prime Dominik Hasek. But that’s exactly what happened in Game 7 on May 10, 2001 for the Penguins.
Kasparaitis only scored
three goals in the other 93 games he played that season, despite logging top pair minutes and getting plenty of time with players like Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Alexei Kovalev, Martin Straka and Robert Lang. Generating offense wasn’t what Kasparaitis was known for.
In the main picture above, the moment is captured on the faces of his teammates with equal parts of pure joy mixed with complete shock that he was the one to step up and score one of the most unlikely Game 7 OT goals in history. To reiterate, this was against a goalie who was on his way to winning his sixth Vezina trophy in an eight year span. Hasek held the high-scoring Pens to only 15 goals in 451 minutes of the series and looked like he was about to will his Buffalo team to the next round until this one snuck by him.
2016: Bonino becomes a legend
Another May 10th, another overtime win in Penguins history. This was the game that took years off all our lives when Chris Kunitz, Nick Bonino and Ian Cole all went to the penalty box within a two minute span for clearing the puck over the glass in the defensive zone in the third period. As a result, a 3-1 Pittsburgh lead got wiped out to send the game to overtime.
Enter Bonino to put himself in franchise lore with the overtime winner. Linemates Carl Hagelin and Phil Kessel (twice) also scored goals in the 4-3 victory. Pittsburgh dispatches the 120-point Capitals in this sixth game of the series to move on and head for their third Stanley Cup in franchise history. Luckily for them, they kept the puck in play long enough to survive.
2017: Fleury saves his best for last
Much like on this date in 1992, the Penguins looked like they were on the ropes heading into this 10th of May in 2017. Another effort at defending a championship was deeply in doubt. Matt Murray was out, and Marc-Andre Fleury gave up nine total goals in Games 5+6 as Washington tried to roar back from a 3-1 series deficit and gain a measure of revenge from the prior year’s elimination. The Caps were back at home and had all the momentum after roundly outplaying Pittsburgh in the prior few games. The end result appeared written on the wall that Game 7 would be the turning point of the Pens/Caps rivalry. Until it wasn’t.
Fleury was able to tune it all out and provide one last glorious moment, standing on his head and winning Game 7 thanks to stopping all 29 shots he saw, including stopping an Alex Ovechkin shot with the knob of his stick. It wouldn’t be the last game he ever played for the Pens (Fleury appeared in three more games in the next series against Ottawa) but it was his last truly major moment in the spotlight. In many ways, it encaptured the full Fleury experience: bouncing back from some lackluster outings to achieve ultimate victory in the end with an unequivocally great performance. Bryan Rust added to his lore by scoring what stood as the game winning goal, Patric Hornqvist tacked on a much-welcomed insurance goal in the third period and the Pens hung on for dear life from there.
