Penguins and the Flyers: In the Octagon for Round 1

"Hey you. Hey! Four Eyes!"
"Who me?"
"No, dipsh*t. Him"
"Wha'dya want?"
"Yeah, you. Tell your boss I said, 'Nice tie.'"

Flyers coach Peter Laviolette passes on a compliment to Dan Bylsma via Penguins assistant coach Tony Granato, with the diminutive Pierre McGuire looking on from below.

When the Penguins and Flyers play, even the coaches pop a gasket.

15 Things to Love about the 2010-2011 Pittsburgh Penguins

With the season at a close, the bitter disappointment of losing in the playoffs lingering on our pierogi-loving palates, there is still so much to be thankful for. Its pretty easy to be a Penguins fan and I was thinking about that when I ran across Michael Farber's 20 Things to Love about Hockey at Sports Illustrated.

Here are 15 Things I loved about this past season (of course, I could make a long list of things not to love about this season, leading off with the inconsistency of the disciplinary action of the NHL, but that's for another day perhaps.)

1. 24/7. If you say you didn't love every bleeping second of '24/7' I'll dispatch Steve Downie to make a dangerous run at you (not that that would cause the NHL to suspend him, mind you.)

The HBO crews did an incredible job of filming and putting together a cohesive narrative in zero time flat. I know Pittsburgh fans hate Alex Ovechkin, but I found that he had a certain, strangely appealing rakish quality. He's really the guy I love to hate, unlike guys who I hate-hate (say Zdeno Chara or Steve Downie.) No, the hockey world is a much more entertaining one with Ovie in it. How wonderful for us that the Penguins and Capitals set up so beautifully as diametrically opposed teams. On the one hand, you've got Dan Bylsma's business cool demeanor juxtaposed against Bruce Boudreau; Ovie, with his tattooed, Eurotrash badboy thing contrasted with Sidney Crosby. The Pens franchise with three Stanley Cups and the Caps with their history as choking dogs (per Tony Kornheiser.) Thank you, hockey gods. Thank you.

2. The Build-Up to the Winter Classic. With the Winter Classic upon us, I was dispatched to the Strip District to get some 'wedding' kielbassi from S & D Polish Deli. (If you haven't had it, the wedding kielbassi is twice smoked and the best damned kielbassi I've ever had in my life. Hands down. Go. Get some. Now!) It was the usual Strip day -- T-shirt vendors all cranked up with a myriad of Winter Classic and Penguins T's available (plus lots of riffs on 'Obitchkin' and what have you), bodies jammed into PennMac, lines out the door at DeLuca's. The best part was, as Dickie Dunn might say, the spirit of the thing.

3. Sid's scoring streak. Cheesy mustache notwithstanding, that was one helluva ride. 25 games with at least one point and 26 goals in that time period. As we used to say about Mario -- Magnificent. We are lucky bunch of yinzers to get to watch this guy on a regular basis.

4. Flower Power. No question Marc-Andre Fleury struggled early. No question he lays an occasional stink bomb from time to time. But there is no single player more responsible for their heroic run to the post-season than Fleury. At times, he makes it look effortless. At other times, you marvel at his ability to change directions, get from one side of the crease to the other. The guy keeps getting better and was frankly hosed that he wasn't even a finalist for the Vezina Trophy. At least the fans got it, after the Game 7 loss to Tampa, with chants of "Fleury! Fleury!" raining down on the ice. Thanks, Pittsburgh. Thanks for getting it.

5. The win streak. Twelve is better than Eleven. I view that as a hockey koan for the ages.

6. The Penalty Kill from Hell. None were better than the Penguins penalty kill, effective 86.1% of the time in the regular season. They were so good at it that there were times, sick as I am, I was actually excited for the Pens to go on the kill. (Good thing, too, because the Pens were short-handed 324 times -- second in the NHL right behind Montreal.) Still, it was a strange thing of beauty to watch, that penalty kill -- bodies flying, men taking pucks in their faces and shoulders and feet, Fleury making impossible stops. It was like watching a two-minute version of "300." Only with more plot and better dialogue.

7. The Kids Are All Right. Testy, Conner, Jeffrey, Lovejoy and Tangradi. For a while there, the Penguins had to run a daily shuttle bus to Wilkes-Barre to replenish the troops. And the young guys, all of them, performed admirably. The best of the bunch, I think, was Ben Lovejoy. He also gave me one of my favorite moments of '24/7' with his, "we're going to find the guys who did this and, probably do nothing about it" comment.

8. Eggo laying out Colton Orr. Hypocrite much? Me? Guilty as charged. I'm not a fan of hockey fights. I think the league can and should do away with them, as well as ALL shots to the head. (I'm actually getting tired of writing about the league's need to consistently, seriously clamp down on head shots.) But I have to admit, my inner Ulf Sammuelson came out in full-throated appreciation when Deryk Engelland dropped Colton Orr like a side of beef. Night, night, Colton.

9. The Killer M's, Martin and Michalek. Ray Shero always does a good job in the off-season, but the additions of Paul Martin and Zbynek Michalek were two of his very finest signings. No way on earth do the Pens finish the season with 106 points and just miss winning their division by an eyelash without these guys.

10. The New Barn. Okay, I fess up. I like old stuff. I am a proper Pittsburgher, always suspicious of change. So I worried that the new place would be too nice, encourage too many suits, and be quieter than the old place where we could be ourselves in the rough and ramshackle, dingy but comfy atmosphere of the Igloo. But Consol is awesome. It is really loud and bright, with great sight lines and, though it is new and shiny, we're still all packed in there. And the fans are still the same fans as before. It feels broken in already -- a good thing. Plus, there's a Tim Horton's on the 200 level. Mmmmm ... donuts.

11. Mario's TV. Chicago has their hockey song (great), and Detroit has the squid (bizarre but great), but Pittsburgh has Mario's TV. I love that fans pack in to sit outside, in the shadow of the old barn, to watch the game. I love that we call it 'Mario's TV.' I love that it is representative of what Pittsburghers have long understood intuitively -- sports are no good if they are not shared experiences. If you meet somebody who doesn't love Mario's TV, tell them, "It's a Pittsburgh thing. You wouldn't understand."

12. The maturation of TK. Tyler Kennedy skates hard every shift. He has always done that. After Sid and Geno went down, it looked to me like he tried to do more. Not that he tried to do too much, but that he was doing more. He is a player who has really come into his game, understands what he can do, what he needs to do, and what his line-mates can do. It's a joy to watch a player like that.

13. Disco Dan. If this guy doesn't win the Jack Adams' Trophy, I'm going to demand on a congressional investigation. I always feel confident with Bylsma behind the bench. I'll take my chances with him any day.

14. James Neal's OT. Sure, the euphoria was short-lived, but tell me you weren't up, jumping up and down and shouting in pure, unadulterated joy when Neal sent that puck in over Dwayne Roloson's right shoulder in the second overtime of Game 4 in Tampa?
15. 2011-2012 Season. It's my thinking that the Penguins -- the guys who were able to suit up and play in the absence of Crosby and Malkin -- will be that much better next year. I think they learned about themselves and how to win without two of the best players on the planet. Assuming Sid and Geno are healthy and ready to go next year, the Penguins should be that much better, poised to make a serious run at Sir Stanley. Also, it should be fun to watch. Perhaps Timbuk 3 said it best.

See you in the fall, Puckheads.

[24/7 image from hockey-news-central.blogspot.com; Fleury image and Engelland & Orr image both from Justin K. Aller/Getty Images; Sid & Geno from Yahoo Sports.]

Penguins Go Down Valiantly in Game 7

At various times through this playoff series, I was elated, anxious, irritated, amazed, disgusted, depressed, joyful, angry, delighted and even perplexed.

If the Penguins collective performance in Game 5 was adismal (abysmal + dismal), Game 7 was the opposite.

I was in awe.

Marc-Andre Fleury was magnificent. The penalty killers were just as good, finally shutting down the dynamic Tampa power play.

They generated rushes, they transitioned, they fought for every puck along the boards. They outhit the Lightning by a mile.

It was gutty and gritty and it reminded me of why I like this team so much.

But it wasn't enough.

The Lightning are loaded with goal scorers -- Steven Stamkos, Simon Gagne, Vincent Lecavalier, and, of course, Martin St. Louis. The Penguins were without their best goal-scorers and even though they managed to win more often than not in the regular season, that inability to score in bunches became a deep, life-sucking crevasse in the post-season.

With a full-compliment of skaters and scorers, offensively speaking, the Lightning were shooting with uzis. The Penguins could only counter with flintlock muskets. (Frankly, it should have been more like .38's, and if anybody's seen Kris Letang's shot, I'm sure he'd like it back. You can turn it in at the Lost & Found at Consol Energy Center. Just through the Trib Total Media Gate -- the one opposite the old barn.)

Imagine what Tampa Bay might have looked like without their leader (Martin St. Louis) and one of their best snipers (Steven Stamkos) on the ice? Think they would have been able to bounce back from 3-1?

Me neither.

The other issue with the Penguins and I think this is the real crux of the matter -- was a pronounced leadership void. The Penguins are all good soldiers. Perhaps there are none better than guys like Tyler Kennedy, Mike Rupp, Craig Adams and Max Talbot -- if I were in a foxhole, I'd want those guys with me, for a fact. But Sidney Crosby is the leader of this team, not just in points, not just in goals scored, not just in stick skills. He is their leader in the intangible ways. His heart, his drive, his bravura all power this team. And like good soldiers, they follow him. He doesn't wear that captain's "C" solely because he's a goal scorer. He wears it because he's their unquestioned leader.

Some guys disappeared for much of this series (yes, Letang and Jordan Staal, I am looking at you), but not last night. Game 7, it was all hands on deck and it looked to me like they tried their best, gave their best, most complete effort, ironically enough, in a loss.

Like good soldiers, the Penguins did everything they knew to do, but without General Omar Bradley out there wearing #87, it was a valiant effort in a losing cause.

I'm sad to see the season end, but I never thought they could seriously make a run at the Cup without Sid. Or Geno, for that matter. Some day, the sting of this loss will fade and we'll remember the many good things from this season, but not right now. Today is a good day to mourn.

[Image from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.]

Conspiracy Theory: Penguins Drop Game 5 in Historic Fashion

Tormented at the Consol Energy Center yesterday, I had just one thought. Okay, I had several thoughts, but one very disturbing one which was this -- the Penguins must hate Pittsburgh fans. They simply refuse to clinch a series on home ice, depriving the 18,000-plus on hand of witnessing in person the magnificence of the NHL playoff hand-shake line.

The atmosphere at the drop of the puck was electric, as loud as I've ever heard a sports facility. I don't mean all the electronic gagetry or the airhorn -- just the organic noise generated by the fans, no vuvuzelas or drums or thundersticks, just the din generated by the throats and feet and hands was ear-splitting.

The Pens got off to a good start, matching the intensity of the crowd for the first 10 minutes of the game, allowing the Bolts only one legitimate attempt on Fleury. Then it was all pissed away. It's hard to put a finger on where it went wrong, terribly, horribly wrong and there were so many problems, I could be here all day enumerating them, but here are a few ideas.

With about four minutes left in the first period, I was thinking that if the Penguins could keep the Lightning off the scoreboard and go into the first intermission 0-0, that would be a good thing. Why? Well because Marc-Andre Fleury can be a slow starter. And the team as a whole is not a great early game team. The earlier the game, the greater the chance you're going to see a stinker. I don't know if it's just the routine of night games or some other weirdness, but they're often better at night. And while it would certainly have been nice to have scored in the first period, I thought that holding the Lightning scoreless for a full period might dampen the Lightnings' spirits a bit, and allow the Penguins to just lean on them, wear them down, the way they did in the first game.

They couldn't close out the first period. In fact, it was so bad, that they let in two goals inside of the final three minutes (or thereabouts).

The first Lightning goal was scored by Simon Gagne, a long time pain in the balls to Penguins fans. They had kept him quiet so far in this series, pretty much limiting the Tampa offense to Marty St. Louis exclusively. With Gagne emboldened, the second goal that got behind Flower just 46 seconds later was scored by Steven Stamkos. My great fear was that if Stamkos got going, the whole team would rise up.

I really think that is what happened. Tampa's whole bench loves when Stamkos gets going; they all get a lift from it. It's like a shot of emotional Red Bull for Stamkos to score. And it turned out to be a portent of things to come later in the game. It snowballed from there. Eventually Dan Bylsma pulled Fleury, but Johnson wasn't really any better. The goal differential was the worst playoff differential in the history of the franchise. It was literally: The. Worst. Playoff. Game. Ever.

I don't know that the team can linger on this loss. In fact, I suspect they have to just toss this one out. When Fleury is bad, he is often epically bad. This was one of those days, for a fact. Of course, his usually stalwart defense didn't help him much. Nor did the wingers or anybody else, for that matter.

There are three things that they need to do on Monday:

1. Flower has to have a bounce-back. And I think he will. He often follows up his worst performances with stellar ones. I think we'll get the Game 4 Marc-Andre Fleury on Monday night, not the Game 2 version.

2. Penalty Kill. Through the first four games, the Pens had allowed four power play goals on 15 opportunities. That penalty kill percentage of 73% is nowhere near as good as the regular season killer percentage of 86%, but still, against a power play unit like Tampa's, it's not bad, all things considered. Yesterday, the Pens allowed goals on four of seven power plays. That's just unacceptable. They have to get the kill back down in the neighborhood of 75% effectiveness, if they want to advance to the second round. It's just that simple.

3. Power Play. The Penguins power play is so putrid, so miserable, that I wish hockey were like football and the Pens could just decline the penalty. They have scored one power play goal on 25, opportunities, a scoring percentage so low the folks at the Carnegie-Mellon are studying it to see if they can learn anything new about absolute zero. The biggest problem with this, of course, is that the Lightning have no fear of taking a penalty. The power play won't punish them for the occasional board or cross-check or slash, so why should they give a rat's ass if they get caught administering one? Heck, it just gives that offending player a chance to rest in the penalty box and come out refreshed after watching the Penguins muck about ineffectively for two minutes.

The power play has been a problem for most of the season, frankly, so this is not a new development. The Pens do not establish possession well. And when they do establish position, they don't get enough traffic in front of the net. I know it's radical, but I wonder if Bylsma shouldn't start Eric Tangradi in place of Chris Conner for this game? I like Conner a ton, but he hasn't done much this series. Also, he's small. Tangradi's a big body. He has shown a willingness to plant himself next to the net. I don't think it's an accident that the Penguins one and only power play goal of the entire series came when Tangradi shielded Dwayne Roloson, preventing him from getting a bead on Tyler Kennedy's shot. Just saying.

If this thing goes to seven games, I may have to get one of those medic alert monitor things, because I'm sure I'll stroke out before the end of the first period.

(Photos from the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review)

Yinz Call That Hockey?

Like I said, when Flower lays a stinker, he lays a bad stinky stinker. Not all his fault. Duper was retrieving his stick and Letang got caught pinching back on the first goal. Not a good effort by anybody by any stretch. In the words of the great Theodor Geisel:

Stink:

Stank:

Stunk:

[Photos from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

Fleury Leads the Way in Game 1, Pens Best Lightning

A handful of years ago, before the Penguins 2008-2009 Stanley Cup Victory, fans were whining and carping about Marc-Andre Fleury -- that he wasn't any good, that he'd never be any good and that the organization should ship away the overall No. 1 pick from the 2003 draft. Okay, not all fans, but there was a vocal group, a minority I hoped, who were foolishly impatient and virulently anti-Fleury. I still hear grumbles from time to time from some fringe wing-nuts about Fleury, but mostly I ignore them because you can never try to bring reason to a sports argument with an idiot.

I have this theory about hockey and I may be just as full of it as the Flower-bashers, but the theory goes: the closer you play to the net, the longer it takes to mature, the longer it takes to get to your game, as it were. A winger or centerman can come in and be good right away. Not that he'll have a complete game, mind you, but the positives he brings to the ice are so apparent that everybody forgives a couple of holes in his game. This is especially true with hockey-savants like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal, but even for ordinary talents, you can see their upside more readily than you can in a defenseman or goalie.

As to the defensemen, again, I'm going to stick with a Pittsburgh example -- Rob Scuderi. There was a season (2005-2006, I think) when I actually audibly groaned whenever Scuds took the ice. I had very few nice things to say about him. His game was painful to watch sometimes, but he kept chipping away at his game, kept improving in little ways, ways that probably only he and his teammates and coaches could see at first. He learned how to play his position, how to position his body to best help Fleury, how to maneuver incoming snipers off of their preferred lines of approach, how to work in tandem with the other defender, how to time throwing his body in front of pucks. By the time the Penguins made it to their first Stanley Cup Finals appearance following the 2007-2008 season, Scuds and Brooks Orpik were the team's best pure defensemen. A year later, when the team actually won the Stanley Cup, nobody was bigger on the back end than Rob Scuderi.

And if it felt like we had to be patient with Scuds, even more patience is needed with a brilliant net-minder. As good as Fleury was when the Penguins won the Stanley Cup, he's been even better this year. Last night, through a first period when the Lightning tilted the ice in his direction (at a pretty steep slope mind you), Flower stood tall and withstood the marauding hordes.

There were so many Tampa players in Fleury's personal space, it looked like the Lightning called a team meeting in the crease. But he denied them time and again, managing to swat pucks away that he couldn't get a bead on, blocking pucks with his ass, blocking them with the back of his knee, pulling pucks out of the air like a left-fielder, smiting all 14 shots on net that came his way in the first period.

That's not to say he didn't play a brilliant game for all 60 minutes, but the Penguins got to their game in the second period (as coach Bylsma likes to say), putting the pressure on Roloson, getting out in transition quickly, not allowing multiple rushes at Fleury, but limiting the chances per possession.

So many players contributed. Brooks Orpik, I believe, got in Steven Stamkos' head when he crushed him on the very first shift of the game. Stamkos only got one shot on net and only attempted four shots total. Call it the Orpik Effect.

James Neal was likewise finishing people off all over the ice, then made a spectacular pass to Alex Kovalev to finally break the scoreless tie.

Seconds later, Arron Asham got a great goal that was the fruit of sticking to the puck like white on rice.

You don't win a playoff game without a holistic team effort, but nobody stood taller than the Flower in Game 1.






[All photos courtesy of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review]

Playoff Preview: Penguins Versus Lightning

How will the series break down? What are the keys for the Penguins if they hope to advance to the second round? How can the Lightning derail this Pittsburgh team? Will I, personally, survive the heightened anxiety of the NHL playoffs?

1. Offense. Even though Steven Stamkos has slowed down considerably from his prolific first-half scoring, he still put 45 pucks in the back of the net (2nd in the NHL) and had 91 points (5th in the NHL). I expect Tampa will try to get him going early in the series, try to feed him opportunities early in the first game, but even if Stamkos doesn't score, the man I most fear is the diminutive Martin St. Louis. I love this guy. I love watching him play. I love how he skates through defenses to create opportunities. Appropriately enough for a guy who plays on the Lightning, the guy is electric. If this Tampa Bay team were playing any other team, I'd be rooting for them, based on my fondness for St. Louis. Which is why he and his 99 points (2nd in the league) and 68 assists (also 2nd) scare the beejesus out of me. He's the offensive engine that really drives the Lightning. Plus Vincent Lecavalier looks resurgent -- and that's quite a one-two-three offensive punch for the Bolts.

Sidney Crosby has been out for three and one-half months and he still leads Pittsburgh in goals (32) and points (66) and while the Penguins have done a noble job of manufacturing points, these are the playoffs and Chris Kunitz, Mark Letestu and Tyler Kennedy are going to be facing top defensive units -- goals are going to be even harder to come by. Even before Evgeni Malkin blew out his knee, Pittsburgh fans were disappointed in his production, but you cannot tell me that now, in the playoffs, you wouldn't kill to have an explosive scorer like Geno back on the ice? In their time together in Pittsburgh, Sid and Geno have combined to account for 30.7 percent of the team's playoff goals since 2007 -- nearly a third of their goals, fer cryin' out loud.
ADVANTAGE: LIGHTNING (huge advantage, editorially speaking)

2. Defense. This may be the Penguins best and most improved unit. Despite the marked paucity of defensive stats available, I decided to beat my head against a wall and try to crunch defensive numbers anyway. That's just how I roll. I used the top seven defensemen for each team -- for the Pens: Kris Letang, Brooks Orpik, Paul Martin, Zbynek Michalek, Ben Lovejoy, Matt Niskanen and Deryk Engelland -- for the Lightning: Victor Hedman, Mike Lundin, Pavel Kubina, Brett Clark, Mattias Ohlund, Randy Jones and Matt Smaby.

The Pittsburgh defensemen are a combined plus 40. Tampa's corresponding crew are a combined minus 7. That's just a shocking disparity. Shocking. Meanwhile, the Pens defensemen have scored 137 points and the Lightning 110. And, in another nice little stat, the Pens defensemen have netted five game winners, versus the Lightnings' two.

It's more than numbers, though. In the off-season, Ray Shero went out and got shot-blocking savants, Zbynek Michalek (146 blocks) and Paul Martin (129 blocks). Then, Coach Dan Bylsma installed a defense meant to protect the net-minder, but also to turn it around and head the other way -- Pittsburgh transitions from defense to offense as well as any team in the league, creating opportunities on the other end. And they are used to winning tight games, ranking third in the league in winning percentage in one-goal games. The playoffs are tight games more often than not.
ADVANTAGE: PENGUINS

3. Goaltending. It is true that to start the season, Marc-Andre Fleury had his head lodged up his fetching little behind and I don't think I will ever figure out just what was wrong with him in the fall as he absent-mindedly watched pucks whiz by from time to time. When Bylsma started Brent Johnson for a stretch until Fleury got some things figured out, there were the nay-sayers who worried that Flower's ego would be permanently damaged or, at the very least, that his relationship with Disco Dan would be forever ruined. Pah-tooey. I did not believe and still do not believe for one hot second that Fleury, a Stanley Cup winning goalie, is so fragile that a couple of benchings when he playing like ass will cause him to fall apart. He's tougher than that and it's ridiculous that anybody thinks that about him. I believe that he is the main reason they are in the playoffs and hosting this round.

On the other side, Dwayne Roloson is a cagey old net-minder, a steady presence in net that Tampa Bay was needing. He's been great for the Lightning and, like St. Louis, were he matched up against any other team, I'd be rooting for him. That said, he's not the kind of stopper that Fleury can be. He just doesn't have it in him.

The Penguins allow just 2.39 goals per game on average and the Lightning 2.85. Much of the burden of getting the Penguins through the first round is squarely on Flower's shoulders who is often magnificent, but I'd be foolish to ignore the fact that he does lay an occasional stinker (and when he does play a stinker of a game, it is bad stinky). Even given that, 'll take Fleury with all the pressure any day of the week.

ADVANTAGE: PENGUINS

4. Special Teams. The Lightning rank sixth in the league in power play efficiency, scoring 20.5 percent of the time they have the man advantage.

The Penguins rank first in penalty kill (even without Matt Cooke because of his idiocy), killing off the man advantage 86.1 percent of the time.

My friends, something has got to give.

I have to wonder if it might be the Pens penalty killing unit actually scoring a goal, particularly given that the Lightning have given up 16 short-handed goals, more than any other team in the league and we know how the Penguins love to get in transition on the kill unit.
ADVANTAGE: PENGUINS (ever so slight)

How is it all going to shake out?
This is a tight series. The Lightning can be explosive. Roloson can pitch an occasional shut out. It's always harder to score in the playoffs and the Pens are already offensively challenged. As good as Fleury and the defense are, there's no way they're going to be able to shut out St. Louis, Lacavalier, and Stamkos, not to mention Simon Gagne and a very motivated Ryan Malone.

Even so, there is something special about this Penguins team. They keep winning against all odds. If they want to continue to do so, they will have to manufacture goals from somewhere. With Staal, Kennedy, et al facing the toughest defensive pairings, they need a boost from their third and fourth line guys and their defensemen. Craig Adams and Mike Rupp, Michalek and Ben Lovejoy: come! on! down!

If you were a mad scientist and you went into a lab to create perfect fourth line guys, what you might come out with would be Adams and Rupp. They just do everything so well, all the little things. And no, they don't have the speed of Chris Conner, or the vision of Sid, or the hands of Malkin. This is why they are fourth line guys. But they are smart, they crash the net, and they lean on teams. In the last five games of the season, Rupp had three goals and an assist, while Adams had one goal and two assists. The defensive guys chipped in down the stretch too, with young Mr. Lovejoy contributing four assists and Michalek adding two goals and one assist.

The other place I would look for an offensive surge is none other than Max Talbot. Talbot has been a big game player in the past (I need not remind Pens fans of his two goals in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals versus the Red Wings). Could we be so lucky as to see a return of Super Max?

Hey, Flyers, Kunitz and Kovie Have Something for Yinz

Nuff said.

Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain -- Or How on Earth Do the Penguins Keep Winning?

By this point in the NHL season, every team has missed players for several hundred games. But the Penguins, the Penguins are:

-- without Brooks Orpik, their best defender

-- without sharp-shooting Evgeni Malkin (although not without his parents at the Consol from time to time)

-- without, of course, the best all-around player in the game, Sidney Crosby.

Just how on earth are they only 5 points behind the Atlantic Division Leading Flyers and the fourth-seed in the playoffs, heading into tonight's game in Philadelphia?

1. The Ham and Eggers.
I wanted to say 'ham and eggers' because it's one of my favorite hockey cliches, but also because the Pens would be hanging onto a playoff spot by their skin of their bills (or possibly on the outside looking in) without contributions from guys like Craig Adams. Oh, to sing the praises of Craig Adams, the guy who was literally signed off the scrap heap by Ray Shero in 2008 has turned into a penalty killing god. It's a good thing, too, because your Pittsburgh Penguins are the most penalized team in the entire league. (You know, if they'd stop taking so many stupid penalties, Adams wouldn't have to take 75 mile an hour pucks to the mid-section so often.) Think Adams is just an ordinary fourth liner? Think again. He's a huge part of the Penguins playoff push this year, one of the smartest players on the ice at all times. And I'm not just saying that because he's a Harvard guy.

2. The Wilkes-Barre effect.
Testy, Conner, Jeffrey, Eggo, Lovejoy.
It's not just Geno and Brooks and Sid missing from the Pens line up. Don't forget, they started the season without Jordan Staal for an extended stretch, and early on, they lost Mike Comrie (who was brought in to be Sid's wingman) and Arron Asham, who was supposed to score some dirty goals for them. Those two have missed a combined 93 games. The Pens have survived, thrived really, because they were able to call up guys from the Baby Pens like Mark Letestu, Chris Connor, and Dustin Jeffrey. Shero was able to pull the trigger on the Goligoski trade to bring in James Neal because Ben Lovejoy and Deryk Engelland have been so effective. I'd like to take a moment to point out that Lovejoy is +9, pretty darned impressive for such a young defenseman.

3. Flower Power.
Yeah, yeah, he started out slow. Okay, he started out worse than slow. He started the season seemingly thinking about pie. Or maybe he was thinking about Bastille Day. Or maybe he was thinking about his grandmother's traditional Bastille Day pie. Because he sure as hell wasn't focused on goaltending in the NHL. Merde. But he worked through it and turned himself back into the kind of net-minder who wins Stanley Cups. He has kept the team in games when the offense just can't get it going. I'll grant you that when he lays a stinker, it is a bad stinky stinker. But, on the flip side of that, when he is good, he is great.

4. Shero-Vision.
And by this, I mean, adding Paul Martin and Zybenek Michalek about 30 seconds after Sergei Gonchar left town. Shero seems to make all the right moves, but perhaps none have been bigger than shoring up the defense with Martin and Michalek. The Pens never did properly replace Rob Scuderi after the 2008-2009 season, then last summer, they lost Gonchar and a very steady defenseman in Mark Eaton. Martin and Michalek are both defensive upgrades over Gonchar, the steady defensive presence that the Penguins were really in need of last year. Michalek has blocked over 1,200 shots this year and Martin is responsible for at least 2,019 clears. Okay, I exaggerate, but you get the point. Both of them are always in the right position and, now that they've played a whole season together, they move like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers out there. It's a beautiful thing.

5. Bylsmagic.
I have to admit to having a hockey crush on coach Bylsma. I love his businesslike approach. I love how articulate he is. I love that he never panics. I love the fact that he is the anti-Bruce Boudreau. It's pretty easy to forget that when Shero fired Michel Therrien in February of 2008, the Pens were on out of the playoff standings and that nobody really expected much from Bylsma. But his smart, calm approach is the perfect fit for this team and the rest is such a crazy story that I still shake my head in wonderment. Also, big ups to Bylsma's coaching staff, particularly assistant coach Tony Granato, who is responsible for the penalty killing unit, first in the league in percentage of penalty kills (85.9%) and second with short-handed goals (12).

Top 5 Reasons for the Penguins Hot Streak

The hottest team in hockey has not only the hottest forward in hockey in the other-worldly Sidney Crosby, but also tremendous chemistry, and coach Dan Bylsma has the Midas touch of late in stringing lines together. Doesn't matter who is out of the line up, he just moves people around and plugs them in and it seems to work. They are going to have to lose a game sooner or later, but so far, they've been outworking teams and when you combine that kind of consistent work with the kind of talent they have, you end up with an 11 game winning streak.

The top five reasons the Pens are clicking right now:

1. Flower is a pistol. I have no idea what was wrong with him the first month of the season. He looked distracted. Like he was thinking about pie, rather than the game in front of him. Maybe it wasn't pie. Maybe it was mousse. Whatever it was, he let in soft goal after soft goal. And usually very early in the game. I have no idea what that was about or, more importantly, how he fixed it. But fixed it seems to be. He started to turn a corner in mid-November and seems to me that he's been getting better and better ever since. For the season, his goals against average is 2.33, which matches his career best of 2.33 in 2007-2008 (when he helped carry the team to their first Stanley Cup Final appearance), but if you look at his stats for just the last month or so when he started to really bring it, he's allowed just 22 goals in 13 games (starting in mid-November.) That's a goals against average of 1.69.

I've missed only a handful of games in the Marc-Andre Fleury era and I can say that it's not just numbers. When he's going good, the team seems to really feed off of it. If he makes just one spectacular save in a game, they seem to rise up collectively around him. Memory is a funny thing, but of the Pens 2008-2009 Stanley Cup run, I remember a few moments, a few snapshots from that post-season, that feel as though they happened 15 minutes ago and the clearest memory I have of that post-season run is Flower stoning Alex Ovechkin on a break away in the Capitals series. I believe the series, and maybe the whole magical post-season run, turned on that one save. Everything works better when Flower is hot.
2. Kris Letang and Crazy Eyes Killer. The defensive pairings are all working really well. Deryk Engelland is the muscle that Alex Gologoski needs to balance him; Paul Martin and Zbynek Michalek are just steady-eddies together. But the stars of the show, are the two best defensemen the Pens have, and they're paired together.

Crazy Eyes Killer, a/k/a Brooks Orpik, is about as good a defenseman as you might find in the league. He's a heavy, an enforcer, and I don't mean that in the way that those terms are generally used in hockey parlance. He's not a fighter, not an instigator and not one to take foolish penalties. Through 24 games, he has just 18 penalty minutes. (The league's biggest wanker, Sean Avery, leads the NHL in penalty minutes with 103. Think about that.) No, Orpik is so solid, so steady that he's able to be tremendously physical without ever playing dirty or taking cheap shots. And he is the last man on earth I would want hitting me along the boards. Ouch.

All of which frees up Letang to work his magic. Letang is the most elegant skater on the ice most of the time. He's fast. He's got a quick release and a knack for scoring -- it's no mistake that Sid feeds the puck out to him. In the past, Letang has been paired with other offensive-minded defensemen, which I think tied his hands, forced him to cover a bit. With Orpik out there being the Yin to Letang's Yang, he's blossoming into one of the best scoring defensemen in the league. They go together like Butch and Sundance. That's some high praise indeed.

3. Paul Martin. Actually, I should have just called this one Ray Shero because Shero seems to make all the right moves in the off-season. He's always looking to tweak the team without disrupting the core of it.

All of which brings me to Martin, the defensive presence they have missed since Rob Scuderi left. In fact, I think the team has sorely missed the defensive pairing of Scuderi and USS Hal Gill since the Cup year. The teams was weaker defensively last year -- anybody remember Sergei Gonchar standing there like a statue as the Montreal Canadiens just blew by him at the blue line? Then they lost Mark Eaton, one of the more reliable defensemen, to free agency, making the defense even weaker. They had recalled Knuckles Engelland from Wilkes-Barre and then Shero went to work, his biggest moves being to bring in Martin and Michalek.

It took some time for them to work together as Michalek was out with some injuries, but they have developed real chemistry and trust together. Plus, Byslma & Co. fixed the anemic power play unit by putting Martin at point. He's a very straight forward kind of player, not one to dither around in the defensive zone considering a hundred and one options as time drains away from the man-advantage. Nope, guy puts his head up and just brings the puck up. It's made a huge, huge difference.

4. Depth.Without Jordan Staal for the whole season, without Aran Asham for a chunk of games, without Michalek for a chunk of games, without Evgeni Malkin, without Mike Comrie (who it was thought would be a great wingman for Sid), they just keep on chugging. Mark Letestu and Chris Conner are playing themselves into starting spots even when Malkin and Staal are back. But what to do with Craig Adams? Mike Rupp? These are good problems for a coach to have -- to have too many players and not enough starting spots.

5. Sid. You can never write too much about what Crosby does on the ice. Sure, he scores a ton and he's on a real tear during this winning streak. And he feeds perfect tape-to-tape passes to his linemates. He handles face offs. He contributes on the penalty kill. He's made a home for himself beside the night, fighting to get dirty goals. Only somehow, when Sid makes them, they're spectacular. He's shooting the puck more from outside. Every time I turn on a game, I marvel at something else he does. Every time.

Wednesday night versus the Toronto Maple Leafs, he broke his stick with a Leaf bearing straight down on Fleury. So he just got right in the way, and was hitting the ice to block a shot with his body, which forced the Leaf to go around him and took him off line. I don't even think the guy got a shot on net. When the best offensive player in the game sells out like that, how can his teammates not?

NHL 2010 Playoffs: Flower Saves Game 3 for Penguins

From True/Slant on May 5, 2010:

Marc-Andre Fleury is not the kind of goaltender who pitches a shut out night after night. He’s no Patrick Roy, no Martin Broudeur, not even Grant Fuhr. Heading into Game Three in Montreal, he had allowed an average of more than three goals per game.

However, Fleury does have an impeccable sense of timing. He is to goaltending what Lucille Ball was to comedy. Her timing? Flawless. Try to find a mistake, a glitch, a missed opportunity to set up a joke or capitalize perfectly in Lucy’s chocolate shop conveyor belt antics or her Vitametavegamin pitch. You can’t. They are perfect, in execution, timbre and timing. Perhaps, if you culled over Lucy’s entire oeuvre, you’d find mistakes, the comedic equivalent of soft goals in the NHL, but when the vulcanized rubber hit the road, she was perfect.

And when the Penguins needed a flawless performance from the man they call Flower, he delivered. Big time. Fleury seems to have a sense of when in the ebb and flow of a game his team needs a big save from him. but this time, his team needed him to save the entire game, particularly that the Canadiens came out soaring.

The Habs played their game to a tee, putting together and executing the game plan they want and need to play to beat the Pens. They dictated tempo for the entirety of the first period. They pitched their tents right in front of Fleury and cycloned the puck into the offensive zone constantly.

Then, just four and one-half minutes into the game, the Canadiens went on the power play and cycled the the puck in front of Fleury pretty much for the duration of that two minutes. Orpik blocked a shot, then a Cammaleri shot went wide of the net (just), before Fleury turned away Brian Gionta and then made another save on another Gionta shot.

This was the game Montreal wanted, a low scoring affair, a game that was 1-0 the waning seconds. Low scoring games = Advantage Montreal. In their series with the Capitals, the average total goals scored in each of their four wins was four goals. That’s both teams. Whereas, in the three Washington wins, there was an average of nearly nine goals per game.

The Canadiens know how their bread is buttered. A low scoring affair, perhaps one with a one-goal differential, is what they were after. On home ice. In front of the best fans in the NHL.

The best chance was to score first and then fall into the rope-a-dope they’re becoming famous for. And for much of the game, Fleury was the only thing standing in their way.

Actually, that’s inaccurate. It’s not like Fleury withstood a constant barrage of pucks coming his way. First off, his defensemen were doing all they could in front of him to block shots and even Evgeni Malkin was credited with three blocks on the night, which thrills me almost more than his power play goal.

What Fleury faced, rather than a constant bombardment were several flurries of activity, separated by long lulls. I often think that it is harder for net minders to stay focused when they’re not in the action. The Canadiens got seven shots into the net in the first period, and then Fleury had to defend only four in the second period, with no seriously sustained rushes as he had seen earlier. It would have been so easy for him to lose focus, to let down, just a wee bit in the final period after Geno put a laser behind Halak just a minute in.

The Penguins, led by the diminutive Flower, regrouped, refocused and turned away opportunity after opportunity in the third period. That is one tough flower.

A flower by any other name would smell as sweet, or so the old saying goes. I’ll take my flower, the variety that only grows on a sheet of ice, the variety originally grown in Sorel, Quebec and transplanted to Pittsburgh any day.

Welcome Back to Pittsburgh, Lord Stanley

I'd like to welcome Lord Stanley's official representative, Cup, back to Pittsburgh. It's been a while since your last visit, Cup, and a few things have changed.

What's that? Oh, yes, you are not mistaken, in fact that was the soft, sexy caress of Mario Lemieux's hands on you last night, but he doesn't play hockey any more. He owns the team now. Yes. Owns. No, I'm not kidding.

The Pirates? Oh, it really has been a while since you were here. They didn't win any titles and they've been just soul-crushingly horrible since you've left, but they have a pretty new ballfield, so they've got that going for them.

Yeah, a few other things have changed around here since then, too. We have a new Mayor. Sigh. I'll just leave it at that. And the housing boom that hit the rest of the country? Well, we never had that, but it's cool because when it all crashed and burned and brought the entire nation's economy down with it, it had a negligible impact here. In fact, ironically enough, Pittsburgh is being touted as a model of fiscal responsibility and good old American, ah, something or other involving character, I think. The city's in the New York Times all the time. Suddenly, they love us, though we're not so sure if the feeling is mutual.

Oh, yeah, that new Steelers coach that you met when you were here in 1992? He stayed for a long time and had a very good run. He finally won a Super Bowl in the 2005-2006 season, but then he retired and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina where he very publicly started rooting for the Carolina Hurricanes. Now he's about as popular around here as Marian "goal-less in the seven most important games of his career" Hosebag (tm Smiley). I guess those two can start golfing together any time.

You'll be spending your summer with a new bunch of guys, so let's get you up to speed on your hosts.

Let's start with Sidney Crosby, the youngest captain ever to tote you around the ice. (Notice, I didn't say 'hoist.' Why do people always say 'hoist?') Anyway, Sid's been touted as the great savior of the game since he was about 9 years old, which is good amount of pressure to carry around, but he never complains about it; he just works harder than he did the day before and, in spite of his youth, the guys in the Pens locker room would follow him to the ends of the earth. He's pretty much an assist machine. Just ask the old-timer and relative Pittsburgh newcomer, Billy Guerin, about what it's like to receive a pass from Sid right on the tape as he's perched in the goal mouth. He's rarely demonstrative and his game is less flashy than a few others, but he is a complete player in every way. He has fantastic hands and great vision and sees things opening up two and three moments before anybody else on the ice does.

The other guy I'm sure you'll be spending a lot of time with is Geno Malkin, the young Russian phenom who hauled in the Conn Smythe trophy, even as Detroit netminder Chris Osgood was thinking about where he'd display it in his home. Malkin's an amazing player. He can just physically take over a game and in Game 7, with Sid out with knee injury for much of the game, Geno threw himself all over the ice with reckless abandon to preserve the Pens victory. His english isn't great, but he's a good kid and he hasn't even reached his peak as a hockey player yet. Oh, don't be surprised if his mother uses you to serve her famous borscht.

Max Talbot is a local superstar, as he'll be the first to tell you, as much for his ebullient personality as his gritty style of play. He plays every shift with his foot flush on the gas peddle. His Game 7 heroics were the stuff made of legends. First, he and Geno irritated Brad Stuart into turning over the puck near the goal and then he buried it by going five-hole on Osgood. The second goal, the one that turned out to be the game winner, was again started when Talbot, this time teamed up with Chris Kunitz, badgered Stuart into another stupid turnover, this one at the blue line. Talbot raced towards Osgood, considered a cross-ice pass, reconsidered it, and lifted the puck over Osgood's shoulder. Top shelf, as Talbot himself would describe it. You'll have a lot of fun out with Max and I'm sure you'll get a lot of attention from the ladies.

Some of these guys aren't so young, and surely you remember Guerin from the old days with the New Jersey Devils, and Petr Sykora, too, from his 2000 performance with those Devils. Sergei Gonchar's been waiting a long time to meet you, but he was so anxious to do so that he played his usual steadying role after suffering a nasty knee injury in the Capitals series; we'll probably find out that he was skating with zero cartilage and ruptured ligaments in his knee ever since, but still played around 20 minutes a game. In Game 7, he logged of 24 minutes time, so yeah, I'd say he was pretty desperate to spend some time with you.

Even old Miro Satan made a return trip from Wilkes-Barre himself, just in the hopes he might dance with you.

The coach? Yeah, that's a crazy story to go from coaching in the AHL in Wilkes-Barre on Valentine's Day to winning the Stanley Cup just a few months later. It is stranger than fiction, indeed. By the way, is it kinda gay of me to have reading glasses that look like Bylsma's glasses? Even a little bit?

But this team is surprisingly deep and so many contributed. Jordan Staal is not even old enough to drink legally in Pennsylvania, but he was a penalty killing machine all playoffs and scored a short-handed goal in Game 4 that probably turned the whole series around. Tyler Kennedy is a grinder if there ever was one and he ended up having the game winner in Game 6. Line-mate Matt Cooke crushed everything within his vision in a red sweater. So did defenseman, Brooks Orpik. But then, he did that last year, so nobody was really surprised. Rob Scuderi single-handedly saved Game 6 with his in-goal heroics.

Well, yes I was getting to that. I was just saving the best for last, because, appropriately enough, so did he. Marc-Andre Fleury is a lithe, acrobatic guy, more of a dancer in net than a jock. They list him at 6' 2" and 180 pounds, but you'll see what a crock that is when you meet him. Perhaps Flower stands 6' 2" in his skates and weighs 180 in all of his gear, skates and stick included. He catches a lot of heat from the media and some of the fans love to disparage him, maybe because he seems so delicate, a trait which masks his iron will. Certain folks will dismiss his performance by pointing to his playoff goals against average (2.61 -- ranks 9th among playoff goalies), or his save percentage (.908 --10th among playoff goalies), but I'd direct you to his post-season wins: 16. It's the only number that matters. It must be said that he's had some rough moments. He let in two flukey goals off those funky springboards in Detroit in Game 1, then he let in a soft goal against Justin Abdelkader (who?) in Game 2. His brilliance in Games 3 and 4 was overshadowed by the Pens offensive firepower. Yeah, I know. He was horrible in Game 5. Just horrible. But when his team needed him most, he turned in back to back brilliant performances in Games 6 and 7 and he fought up until the very final moment, making a spectacular save on Niklas Lidstrom with less than one second left in Game 7. It was a save worthy the Mount Rushmore of saves, one of the Seven Wonders of the World kinda things.

It took a moment, after the clock wound down to zero, for anybody to realize that he had done it, and that the Pens had done it. With that, any questions about Fleury's capacity to perform in the clutch, to come up big in big moments, were answered. He went into a building that had his number, against a team that had his number, a team that circled like vultures for the last 20 minutes of action, and he stoned them. He just fucking stoned them. To be the best, you have to beat the best. That's what Fleury and the Pens did and that, my old friend, takes some stones.

So, welcome back. Give our best to Lord Stanley and enjoy your stay in Pittsburgh. You should get used to it. I can envision you spending a lot of summers here.