Morning After Meltdown: Pittsburgh Penguins

The Tampa Bay Rays weren't the only team in professional sports choking and giving up a lead late in the game on Thursday night. They were joined by the Pittsburgh Penguins who blew a 3-0 lead and ended up losing 4-3 against the Washington Capitals.

Pittsburgh led 3-0 less than two minutes into the second period against Washington on power-play goals by Malkin, Alex Goligoski, and Miroslav Satan, with Satan scoring with a two-man advantage, only to be shut out the rest of the game. Caps netminder Jose Theodore made 23 saves to improve to 13-4-1-1 against the Penguins.

“We kept pushing and pushing,” said Alex Ovechkin, who didn’t score a goal for the second successive game. “Maybe we were sleeping the first two periods, I don’t know, but we weren’t playing our hockey. The first period we were terrible, we were giving them lots of chances to score goals.”

That all changed as Washington outshot Pittsburgh 21-6 in the third and on goals from Tomas Fleischmann, Alexander Semin, Michael Nylander, and the game winner from Boyd Gordon.

I bet if you would have told Pens fans before this game that Pittsburgh would lose despite Alex Ovechkin not scoring and being up by three goals late in the game, they would have admitted you right to the crazy house as punishment. Or just forced you to spend three days in Pittsburgh. It's pretty much just as bad.

Congratulations Pittsburgh Penguins! For your big collapse, though not the biggest in all of sports Thursday night, you are awarded the Morning After Meltdown!