FanHouse Miroslav Satan

Newsmakers in the NHL: During the regular season it's our daily look at the previous night's action. During the offseason, it's our link dump that looks at some of the storylines and moves taking place around the league three times per week. Have a tip or something you want linked? Send it in to nhlfanhouse@gmail.com.

Satan Interested In Return To Islanders

There's still a few intriguing options on the free agent market -- Alex Tanguay probably being the best -- including former Oilers, Sabres, Islanders and Penguins winger Miroslav Satan. After splitting the 2008-09 season between the NHL and AHL, the 34-year-old is still interested in a possible return to Long Island, and according Newsday's Katie Strang, he skated at the team's practice facility on Wednesday.

It's officially the offseason, meaning the time is right to look into the future. We continue our division-by-division preview of the potential wheeling and dealing with the Atlantic Division.

It will be an interesting summer for the five teams in the Atlantic. Four teams made the playoffs, including the eventual Stanley Cup champion, and the one team that didn't make it -- the New York Islanders -- holds the first pick in Friday's draft, which isn't a bad consolation prize. All around it was a pretty successful season for these five teams.

Let the free agent frenzy begin! Sort of. There are reports surfacing out of Russia that KHL clubs Metallurg Magnitogorsk and Bary's Astana are interested in signing Pittsburgh Penguins free agents Petr Sykora and Miroslav Satan.

Any truth to the rumors? Not if you ask their agent, Allan Walsh, who denied the reports via his twitter feed (technology ... amazing).

It's officially the offseason, meaning the time is right to look into the future. We'll be running our division-by-division preview of the offseason beginning later in the week, but we wanted to give the two top dogs their own space. Yesterday we took a look at the Red Wings. Today: the summer outlook for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Thanks to Max Talbot's two-goal performance in Game 7, along with Marc-Andre Fleury's buzzer-beating save on Nicklas Lidstrom, the Pittsburgh Penguins brought home their third Stanley Cup. General manager Ray Shero now has the task of dealing with 10 unrestricted free agents and finding a way to construct a team that is capable of keeping the Cup in Pittsburgh.

The Pittsburgh Penguins ended a 17-year Stanley Cup drought on Friday night with a 2-1 win over the Detroit Red Wings, giving the franchise its third championship. While current general manager Ray Shero will get his name on the cup for overseeing the hockey operations the past three seasons, former general manager Craig Patrick also had a hand in putting this team together.

After the jump, a player-by-player look at how the 2008-09 Penguins were built over the years.

Petr Sykora's return to the Pittsburgh Penguins lineup appears as if it's over after just one game, as Darren Dreger of TSN is reporting the veteran winger left the arena on crutches and with a brace on his right foot Wednesday afternoon.

Sykora played just a little over five minutes in Pittsburgh's 2-1 win on Tuesday, registering two hits and one blocked shot. As it turns out, the blocked shot, which occurred midway through the second period off the stick of Kris Draper, is the cause of the injury and will likely keep the 32-year-old out of Friday's deciding Game 7 in Detroit.

I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures, and as the Pittsburgh Penguins look to extend the Stanley Cup Final to a seventh game, multiple media outlets (including Craig Custance's twitter feed!) are reporting that forward Petr Sykora will be returning to the lineup for Game 6 on Tuesday night.

Sykora has been a healthy scratch for 17 of the Penguins' 23 playoff games, while the veteran winger has been mired in a slump since early February, tallying just seven points (four goals, three assists) in his past 31 games.

So the rematch is set: Pittsburgh vs. Detroit. For the first time in 25 years, the same two teams will meet in back-to-back years for the right to fight for Lord Stanley's Cup, and while one of these teams is relatively similar to last year's version (with one big exception) the other is very, very different.

The NHL's new hard-line stance on message-sending and late-game fisticuffs seems to have lasted, oh, about two weeks. Late in the third period of Pittsburgh's 7-4 win on Thursday, Carolina's Ryan Bayda was involved in a line brawl of sorts that featured Bayda delivering what appeared to be a cross-check to the face of Kris Letang.

In the end, Miroslav Satan fought Patrick Eaves, Tim Gleason fought Letang, and Bayda was issued a match penalty for intent to injure. By rule, Bayda was immediately suspended from further competition pending a league review. That review has taken place, and Bayda walks away with a $2,500 fine and no suspension.

When a trip to the Stanley Cup final is on the line, players tend to step up their games and do things they might not ordinarily do. Sometimes it's something simple, something they should already be doing like blocking a shot or backchecking ... or in the case of Miroslav Satan, something as extreme as fighting.

In the closing minutes of Pittsburgh's 7-4 win in Game 2 on Thursday night, a line brawl erupted behind the Penguins' goal that included Satan, a player that was banished to the minor leagues in March and had his effort and desire called into question by some Penguins observers during the regular season, exchanging punches with Carolina's Patrick Eaves. Video after the jump.