Posts tagged BrooksOrpik at FanHouse

Hopefully by now you've seen the video of Sidney Crosby and his attempt to light a fire under his teammates by mugging Brett McLean during Saturday's game in Pittsburgh. Actually, it looked like he may have been trying to steal McLean's lunch money. Following the game, both sides had an opportunity to sound off on the showing, and the word "embarrassing" was thrown around the Florida locker room.

First, let's start with Crosby and the Penguins. In his locker room interview with the Pittsburgh media, Crosby acknowledged that he asked McLean if he wanted to go -- as was initially pointed out in the comments section of our earlier post -- and Crosby, naturally, claims that he accepted the challenge.

When a reporter pushed for further confirmation that McLean agreed to dance, Crosby repeated his "yes" and offered up the possibility that the Panthers forward didn't take his offer seriously. He also made some reference to "wasting 20 minutes in the box," while also suggesting his efforts weren't worthy of 19 minutes in penalty time. I'm guessing those statements will fly like a led balloon with hockey fans outside of the 412 area code.

Anyway, if Crosby really did challenge McLean, why did it appear that McLean was ambushed right off the draw? Here's what he told George Richards of the Miami-Herald.

The Pittsburgh Penguins defense has been crushed by injuries through the first three months of the season, as they've been without their top two defenders -- and power play quarterbacks -- in Sergei Gonchar and Ryan Whitney. A couple of weeks ago, they also lost Hal Gill to a shoulder injury, meaning the Penguins have been skating the past three weeks without their top three defenders from last season's playoff run.

Factor in the month that No. 1 goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury missed with a groin injury, and the various other injuries suffered by Tyler Kennedy, Mike Zigomanis and Max Talbot throughout season, and, well, it's been crazy. Actually, it's not that different from a year ago.

Good news, however, as Whitney will be making his return to the lineup tonight when the Penguins take on Tampa Bay at Mellon Arena. Whitney's been out all season after undergoing foot surgery over the summer.

Whitney certainly has his critics among Penguins fans -- myself included, sometimes -- he's still going to be a welcome addition to the lineup with his puck-moving skills, which will hopefully help what has been a mind-numbingly inconsistent power play unit.

What an incredible night of hockey. Let's get right to it.

The last time the Lightning and Rangers met, way back on November 6, Tampa Bay goalie Mike Smith went crazy on Rangers forward Aaron Voros, giving him a few subtle hacks to the leg, shots to the head, and various other random acts of violence. As a result, the two had a "fight" that led to Voros trying to punch Smith through his mask, and Rangers coach Tom Renney calling for the Tampa goalie to face some sort of suspension.

This time around, there was another fight involving two unlikely participants, as Rangers forward Nikolai Zherdev squared off against No. 1 overall pick, Steve Stamkos. And it was actually a pretty good showing.

Welcome to the NHL FanHouse 2008-09 season preview. While other sites are previewing "30 teams in 30 days," we decided to take advantage of the extra time off before the start of the season to bring you all 30 previews over the next three weeks. We're counting down in reverse order of finish from last season in each conference every weekday from now until October 3. Look for an Eastern Conference preview every morning and a Western Conference preview every afternoon. Click here to read them all.

Who's In: Miroslav Satan, F (FA-NYI), Ruslan Fedotenko, F (FA-NYI), Matt Cooke, F (FA-WAS), Eric Godard, F(FA-CGY), Janne Pesonen, F (FA-Kärpät, Finland)

Who's Out: Marian Hossa, F (FA-DET), Ryan Malone, F (FA-TBA), Jarkko Ruutu, F (FA-OTT), Gary Roberts, F (FA-TBA), Georges Laraque, F (FA-MTL), Ty Conklin, G (FA-DET), Adam Hall, F (FA-TBA)

What's Changed: Everything is different but nothing has changed in Pittsburgh. Hossa, Malone, Roberts, and Ruutu are gone, but this was Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin's team when they were all in Pittsburgh and the team still belongs to them with those four gone. A lot has been made about the guys that have departed, especially Malone and Hossa, but Malone's breakout was greatly aided by Malkin and the Penguins earned the second seed in the playoffs last year almost entirely without Hossa's help. At this point, there's no use in talking about the guys that are gone because they're gone.

Losing is something that I thought I could handle. When I'm not writing here at FanHouse, I spend a lot of time writing a Pittsburgh Pirates blog. When I was a freshman and a junior in college at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, I routinely plunked down my money to watch awful hockey teams lose games. Still, despite absorbing literally thousands of losses as a sports fan, I find myself staring blankly at a computer screen right now trying to describe what happened to my Pittsburgh Penguins tonight and every time I think about what just happened, part of me goes numb.

There's something special that happens when a community attaches itself to a team. Pittsburgh loves its Steelers, but that's exactly what Pittsburgh loves. The Steelers. Football players and their personalities blend into faceless robots on the field. The Steelers have a mystique and an aura that Pittsburgh will always love, no matter who pulls on black and gold jerseys. Hockey is different. It's a team sport that's defined by individuals and it was the players, not the team, that Pittsburgh attached itself to this year.

This Penguin team was special to watch because we watched them gel and grow before our eyes this year. On October 5th in Raleigh, they were a team that was strongly dependent on Sidney Crosby, waiting for their star to step up and make something happen. They looked like a team that was at least a year away from truly contending. On June 4th in Pittsburgh, they were a complete hockey team that had exceeded expectations, fell just short in crunch-time and watched the Red Wings hoist the Stanley Cup with a million "what-ifs" dancing in their heads.

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.

Click here for more NHL playoff previews.

This is the series most likely to be referred to as "the closest series in the second round." Both the Pens and Rangers finished the regular season on fire, both of them breezed through the first round, and they've already played each other eight times this year. I think it's fair to say that neither team will find this match-up as easy as their first rounder.

And we've got subplots, too! In addition to being division rivals, we've got Jaromir Jagr playing against Pittsburgh in what might be his last season and thus, last chance to take a team of his own to a cup. The Rangers took 5 of the eight regular season games from the Pens this year, but two of their wins went to overtime. This one really breaks down to the classic offense vs. defense battle.