The Los Angeles Kings entered the offseason with a fair amount of cap space and plethora of young assets that could have been used to bring in a big-name player to help boost a young team from Western Conference bottom-feeder to legitimate playoff contender. Personally, I was pushing for disgruntled Senators forward Dany Heatley, who seemed like he would have been a nice fit. The Kings, however, may have found an even better fit, when you consider Heatley is, apparently, out of his mind and doesn't quite know what he wants or where he wants to go.
Late Friday night, the Kings acquired veteran forwardRyan Smyth from the Colorado Avalanche for defensemen Kyle Quincey and Tom Preissing, and a fifth-round draft pick. For the Kings? They get a gritty, veteran leader still capable of scoring 25-30 goals. For the Avs? It's a salary dump, and a head start in the season-long quest for Taylor Hall.
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.
It's the series everybody is talking about, as Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin prepare to hit the ice in a one-on-one, steel cage battle for NHL supremacy. Wait. What's that? There's actually other players involved in this series? We take a look at the series after the jump.
When the Pittsburgh Penguins needed a big save on Friday night, Marc-Andre Fleury was there to make it. When they needed a big save in Sunday's 6-3 loss in Philadelphia -- or any save, for that matter -- they didn't get it. Actually, they didn't get much of anything from any player, with the lone exception of Evgeni Malkin, as the Philadelphia Flyers thoroughly dominated game 3, setting the stage for what could be an epic game 4 on Tuesday night.
The Penguins and Hurricanes entered Tuesday's game in Pittsburgh separated by one point in the Eastern Conference standings, and when you consider the two teams occupied the No's. 9 and 10 seeds respectively, with an opportunity to jump into the No. 8 seed closing out the first half the season, well, it was a pretty big game. Cam Ward rose to the occasion for the Hurricanes, stopping 32-of-33 shots, leading them to a 2-1 win.
Ward was fantastic most of the night, but saved his best play for the final five minutes of regulation when the Penguins were on a four-minute power play. Over the past two nights, the 24-year-old netminder has stopped 66-of-67 shots.
For two periods Wednesday night's Penguins-Capitals tilt lived up to the hype -- and we certainlyhyped it. Following some spirited trash talk between Alex Ovechkin and the Penguins bench prior to the start of the third period, Ovechkin transformed himself into a one-man wrecking crew, as he helped take over the game and lead the Capitals to a 6-3 win.
The Capitals scored four goals in the third period -- including two from Ovechkin -- as they snapped a three-game losing skid. Meanwhile, for the Penguins, the inconsistencies continued, as they failed to win back-to-back games yet again. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Penguins have not won consecutive games since the middle of November.
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.
A quick recap of yesterday's action from around the National Hockey League.
Today's post will be primarily dedicated to that epic Stanley Cup Finals rematch in Motown because, well, that's the type of game the NHL should be dreaming about. The Penguins overcame third period deficits of 5-2 and 6-4 as they won their fourth in a row, 7-6. It won't make up for a Stanley Cup Finals defeat, obviously, but man, it still feels good.
For the first 45 minutes or so, the Red Wings were doing to the Penguins what they did during last season's Finals ... frustrating them and, at times, dominating play with a relentless puck-possession game, refusing to give the Penguins an inch of space. When Henrik Zetterberg floated that shot behind Marc-Andre Fleury to make it 5-2 with just over ten minutes to play, it seemed as if there was no chance for the Penguins to mount any sort of come back.
Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, something clicked for the Penguins as they out-shot the Red Wings 13-5 over the final ten minutes of regulation, and 4-0 in overtime.
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.
Holy cow. The Penguins and the Flyers are playing in the Eastern Conference Finals. If you live or have lived in Pennsylvania, you understand what a big deal this is. The players from these teams don't like each other. The fans of these two teams despise each other. There's a ton of civic pride on the line here. This is everything fans look for in a playoff series.
But to make this series all about the rivalry doesn't give these two teams the respect they deserve. The Penguins have played great hockey since January. The Flyers have been on fire since around the trade deadline, when everyone had left them for dead. They both disposed of their very talented second round opponents with surprising ease. There's really no doubt left that these two teams are the best teams in the Eastern Conference right now. The rivalry only heightens the intensity.
The Los Angeles Kings entered the offseason with a fair amount of cap space and plethora of young assets that could have been used to bring in a big-name player to help boost a young team from Western Conference bottom-feeder to legitimate playoff contender. Personally, I was pushing for disgruntled Senators forward Dany Heatley, who seemed like he would have been a nice fit. The Kings, however, may have found an even better fit, when you consider Heatley is, apparently, out of his mind and doesn't quite know what he wants or where he wants to go.
The Penguins and Hurricanes entered Tuesday's game in Pittsburgh separated by one point in the Eastern Conference standings, and when you consider the two teams occupied the No's. 9 and 10 seeds respectively, with an opportunity to jump into the No. 8 seed closing out the first half the season, well, it was a pretty big game. 
For two periods Wednesday night's Penguins-Capitals tilt lived up to the hype -- and we 
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 
A quick recap of yesterday's action from around the National Hockey League.
