FanHouse AdamHall

As far as November regular season games go in the NHL, tonight's Penguins - Red Wings tilt is a pretty big one, if for no other reason than it's the much anticipated rematch of last season's Stanley Cup Finals, which the Wings ultimately won in six games.

It was a bad omen for the Penguins when, prior to game one, goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury tripped and fell over the red carpet as he was exiting the tunnel. I was at Joe Louis Arena that night, and as soon as he went face-first into the ice it was difficult to not get that feeling of, "oh, so it's going to be that type of series." The rest of the team followed in that path for the first two games, falling all over themselves, as Detroit was clearly the superior team.

The Penguins fought back, however, pushing it to six games only to fall inches short as Marian Hossa's last ditch effort was stopped as time ran out on the season.

There is a popular story in Pittsburgh sports lore that after Game 4 of the 1979 World Series, which the Pirates lost 9-6 to fall behind the Orioles three games to one in the series, Willie Stargell, Dave Parker, and Chuck Tanner sat around the clubhouse talking about the loss and Pops stood up and said, "Coach, I don't know if we can win this series, but just for one game I want to show everyone what the Pittsburgh Pirates can play like." The Pirates responded with three straight wins, lead by Stargell's sixth inning homer in Game 7, to take home what is to date their last world title.

I don't know if the same thing happened in the Penguins dressing room after Game 2 of these Stanley Cup Finals, but I do know that most Penguin fans felt the way Willie Stargell did on that October night. The team that played the first two games of the Finals was not the team that breezed through the Eastern Conference. The Red Wings were great in those games, but the Penguins were equally bad. Was it too much to ask for ONE performance to show everyone that the Penguins belonged in the Finals?

Apparently, it was not. With the season lying in the balance, Sidney Crosby picked the team up and scored two early goals, nearly blowing the top off of the Mellon Arena. What followed those goals were frantic, fast paced hockey filled with great scoring chances, pucks ringing off of posts, and a tense final 40 seconds that saw the Penguins hold on and take down a win to draw to within one game of the Wings. It was exactly the kind of hockey most people expected from this series and it was exactly what the Penguins needed after their early series debacle.

It's been sixteen years since Mario Lemieux lifted the Stanley Cup high in Chicago Stadium, celebrating the Penguins' second consecutive championship. The franchise has hit a lot of ups and downs since that 6-5 win over the Blackhawks, nearly reaching the finals again in 1996 and 2002 and nearly fading into oblivion in 1999 and again in 2007.

Now that the team is back in the Finals, the question on every Pittsburgher's mind is, "Can they win it?" They're not the favorites and they're facing a much tougher task than they have in any of the first three rounds against the star-laden, veteran Detroit Red Wings. Given the lack of overlap between the conferences and the relative ease with which both teams dominated clearly inferior opponents in the playoffs, I can't tell you if the Penguins are going to win (also, I'm a Pens' fan and there's no way I'm jinxing this). What I can do is give you five solid reasons that the Penguins CAN win the Cup.

1. Evgeni Malkin- Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby get all the press, but there hasn't been a better player in the NHL than Malkin since mid-January. In the 21 games Crosby missed, Malkin scored 36 points. In the second half of the year, he's got 60. With Crosby back in the playoffs, Malkin hasn't missed a beat. Through Game 1 in the Flyers series, he had eight goals and nine assists. The Flyers targeted him from that point on, beat him up pretty good, and he only managed one goal and one assist in the final four games of the series, but with a week off he should be ready to go for the Finals. Sidney Crosby is the media darling, but Malkin is the guy that almost every Penguin fan wants with the puck on his stick in the last minutes of a close game.