Lemieux, Barrasso Return Pittsburgh to Health, Lead 3-2 Victory in Game 2

PITTSBURGH — Mario Lemieux was on his back and the Pittsburgh Penguins were on the critical list. Then Lemieux got well and the Penguins got even.

Pittsburgh changed goaltenders and game plans, shook off Lemieux’s sudden illness and held on to defeat the Florida Panthers, 3-2, Monday night to tie the Eastern Conference finals at a game apiece.

Tom Barrasso, strengthening Pittsburgh’s gambling defense with his puck-handling skills, stopped 30 shots in his first start since April 24. The biggest was a sprawling stop of a Bill Lindsay breakaway with three minutes remaining that would have tied it.

The Penguins needed every save because Lemieux spent the first 10 minutes of the second period taking intravenous fluids to combat the stomach flu. He returned to set up one goal and score another as the Penguins rebounded from Florida’s 5-1 victory in Game 1.

“It was dehydration. It was pretty bad. . . . I was real tired and dizzy, but once I got [the treatments] I felt good and was able to come back,” Lemieux said.

After he did, Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr scored against Florida goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck, and Pittsburgh opened leads of 2-0 and 3-1.

Before that, Sergei Zubov awakened Pittsburgh’s slumping power play with a tie-breaking goal as the Penguins frantically pressed to get the early lead, even without Lemieux and the injured Ron Francis.

Zubov broke a scoreless tie at 7:21 of the second period, powering a shot from the high slot by Vanbiesbrouck after intercepting Gord Murphy’s clearing pass.

The Penguins, clearly relieved at not having to play from behind again, pushed it to 2-0 at 13:57 when Lemieux assisted on Jagr’s goal barely three minutes after returning.

Lemieux then swept in from the left circle to slap a rebound of Chris Tamer’s shot by Vanbiesbrouck at 8:12 of the third and give Pittsburgh a 3-1 lead.

Barrasso, an almost forgotten man since being replaced by Ken Wregget in Pittsburgh’s momentum-shifting four-overtime victory over Washington in the first round, shut out Florida for two periods before Ray Sheppard and Lindsay scored in the third period.

“Barrasso is better at handling the puck. He got the puck out of their zone quite a few times,” Panther Coach Doug MacLean said. “He makes it harder for us to generate forechecking, so we’ll have to take a look at [countering] that.”

With Barrasso deftly preventing follow-up shots and Florida rushes to the net, the Penguins repeatedly sent their forwards up the ice even before he cleared the puck. The strategy was risky and led to several odd-man rushes the Panthers couldn’t convert.

“They were really going at the start, but it settled down and we had a lot of chances,” the Panthers’ Tom Fitzgerald said. “But with all the chances we had . . . we didn’t get the puck on the net. We tried to make fancy plays . . . and we can’t play fancy.”

Jagr said the Penguins tried to open the game for obvious reasons.

“It is so tough to play against them when they get the lead,” he said. “It’s always better when we have the lead.”

After a three-day TV-dictated delay, Game 3 will be Friday in the Miami Arena, where the Penguins have dodged the Panthers’ rat-throwing fans to win four of five games.

“But we’re pretty good in the rats’ nest,” MacLean said.