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Game #1 vs. Penguins – Q&A With Mike Darnay of Pensburgh

By 1489

Mike Darnay is Editor-in-chief at Pensburgh.com. Follow him on Twitter @MikeDarnay, where he’ll be bitching about Liverpool FC as much as I am. 

The Penguins have lost Bonino, Cullen, Daley, Cunitz, and Fleury from last year’s champs. Which of these will hurt most?

I feel like this question might need to wait a little bit — at least until we see how Jim Rutherford decides to handle the 3C position. As it appears going into the season, losing Nick Bonino is going to hurt the most. If the Penguins can make a trade for someone like Riley Sheahan and remedy that roster spot, I think the answer might be Matt Cullen. He very quietly played a fantastic veteran role as a 4C (much like Michal Handzus did for Chicago, right?). (Not funny, Mike, -ED)

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Game #1 vs. Penguins – Q&A With Mike Darnay of Pensburgh

By Sam Fels 1232

Mike Darnay is Editor-in-chief at Pensburgh.com. Follow him on Twitter @MikeDarnay, where he’ll be bitching about Liverpool FC as much as I am. 

The Penguins have lost Bonino, Cullen, Daley, Cunitz, and Fleury from last year’s champs. Which of these will hurt most?

I feel like this question might need to wait a little bit — at least until we see how Jim Rutherford decides to handle the 3C position. As it appears going into the season, losing Nick Bonino is going to hurt the most. If the Penguins can make a trade for someone like Riley Sheahan and remedy that roster spot, I think the answer might be Matt Cullen. He very quietly played a fantastic veteran role as a 4C (much like Michal Handzus did for Chicago, right?). (Not funny, Mike, -ED)

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Your Friends And Neighbors – ’17-’18 NHL Team Previews: The Champ Is Here

By 1580

For the first time in 19 years, a team will enter this NHL season twice-defending champions. The Pittsburgh Penguins will look to be the first team to win three in a row since some team called the Islanders did it in the 80s. We’ll forgive you if you’ve never heard of them. The Penguins still have the star power at the top of the roster to be a hard out for anyone come April and May. And unlike some previous champs, like one in this area code, they haven’t had to completely erode their depth in a deal with the devil for silverware.

Pittsburgh Penguins

’16-’17 Record: 50-21-11 111 points (2nd in Metro, won it all)

Team 5v5 Stats: 50.1 CF% (16th)  51.3 SF% (6th)  52.6 SCF% (6th)  8.5 SH% (5th)  .926 SV% (8th)

Special Teams: 23.1 PP% (4th)  79.8 PK% (20th)

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Meaning

By 2084

Such a weird league. We have spent most of the past two years, if not longer, complaining that the salary cap has essentially made the differences between teams smaller and smaller, to the point where they’re hardly noticeable at times. How the shootout and stupid overtime system and the even dumber points system makes the standings somewhat fake a lot of years, and keeps teams bunched together while also making it nearly impossible for anyone to pass anyone.

And yet we sit here, with three teams having won eight of the past nine championships. And the one outlier in that group, the Bruins, played for another and lost to one of the three. So four teams have taken up 11 of the possible 18 Final slots. Stretch it back a round, and those four teams have taken 16 of 36 conference final spots, with the Kings, Hawks, and Penguins each losing one or two in that frame.

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Watch The Weather Change

By 1457

If you’re a fan of watching storylines change on a nightly basis and watching teams try and counter one another, this is a series for you. And yet it feels like when each of these teams plays its best, or the best it has in this series, they lose.

The Penguins probably played their best game of the Final last night. They figured out something that the Hawks only figured out far too late, the Blues simply aren’t capable of, and the Ducks are too stupid. They didn’t have any forwards fleeing the zone, coming deeper in the defensive zone on breakouts to try and relieve the pressure, and break up the ice as a five-man unit. It’s really the only way to deal with the Preds’ pressure. You have to be an outlet for the defense under their ridiculous forecheck and then you need options coming through the neutral zone with the Nashville d-men standing up at their line and the forwards closing in from behind.

The Penguins did it, caused the Preds more problems than they’d seen, and got the equalizer from Crosby after forcing the Preds into a shoddy line-change after sustained pressure.

But there’s a problem with that…

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So We Sailed Up To The Sun

By 1377

Since the matchup was set, I’ve had a hard time getting a hold on this series. Which probably means we’re in for a good one, which the NHL could use. It’s been a while since there was a classic Final. Hawks-Bruins is probably the last one, and even that lost some of its luster when all of Patrice Bergeron’s organs fell into his feet. Rangers-Kings was awful, Hawks-Lightning was tightly contested but the games theselves weren’t really much for the neutral (the last three games were all 2-1 or 2-0). I honestly don’t remember any of the Sharks-Penguins games from last year except for maybe Donskoi’s OT winner. Hopefully, we get a little better here.

It’s also hard to fully judge these two teams as banged up as they are. While the Penguins are basically only a Letang short of a full lineup, there are so many guys who look like they are carrying something or have missed time that you don’t know exactly what you’re getting. The Preds don’t have Johansen and Fiala, which is a real problem.

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Get It Over With

By 1717

It’s startling on how the feelings can change about a Game 7 in just one round. Just a couple weeks ago, we were all eagerly anticipating the Game 7 between the Capitals and Penguins, the culmination of a Mega Powers matchup that we’d been looking forward to since about November. Now tonight we have a Game 7 of a series that we pretty much just want to die and go away forever.

The constant argument over the Senators is an excellent example of how basically all sports coverage refuses to seen any nuance in any subject. The past couple weeks, or even months, have been one side screaming how boring the Senators are to watch at times, and the other screaming back that it’s not their job to be entertaining but to win.

Both of these things can be true.

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The NHL Needs To Decide What It Wants To Be

By 1551

I suppose one of the main drawing points to another Penguins-Capitals series was that it was always likely to generate controversy, given how often these two teams have met, how hyped it’s been, and how the fanbases feel about each other. Make no mistake, a lot of the furor over Niskanen-Crosby: In Your House is one set of fans/media reacting to the other and then ratcheting up over reactions to that.

This isn’t just about this particular incident, and we’ll get to the others. As far as this one, I’m just not buying Eddie Plugs’s or any Caps fan/coach’s excuse on it, and it isn’t just about this one in particular. Yes, things happen fast on the ice. Why we love it. But the reason those dudes are out there and we’re sitting here is because they have the reaction time to deal with how fast things happen out there.

Sure, it happens too fast for Niskanen to plan it all and consider the consequences and the particular angle he’d like to take to Crosby’s face. But don’t tell me after watching him follow-through on it he didn’t see a window to Crosby’s head and take it. I just don’t buy anything else. And Niskanen’s previous behavior in this series does him no favors either.

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Life Goes On: Eastern Conference 2nd Round Preview

By 2255

The West kicks off tonight, so let’s get the previews done before we settle in for what really is shaping up as a pretty intriguing second round (except for Sens-Rangers, and that has Erik Karlsson).

HOLY FUCKING SHIT CAPITALS-PENGUINS!!!

Look, any hockey fan worth his or her salt has known this was going to happen in the second round and that it’s essentially the Stanley Cup Final. Barring some injury weirdness or Henrik Lundqvist going Fantastic Four in net or something equally unpredictable, either of these teams is going to annihilate the Rangers or Senators. These are the two best teams in the NHL by some distance. This is the Steamboat-Macho Man to the Final’s Hogan-Andre The Giant. I doubt we’ll remember the Final as much as we’ll remember what might happen here. Instead of rolling our eyes at the same matchup for the second year in a row and our exhaustion of the NHL trying to force this down our throats for years before both teams were ready to provide classic series years in a row, we should just be anxious to watch the best the sport is going to offer.

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I Hurt The Flower: Hawks 5 – Penguins 1

By 1301

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

There’s a line I like to use, I wish it was mine. Most of the shit I say isn’t mine. Anyway, I took it from something someone said about the first era of Mourinho’s Chelsea. It was, “The way to beat them is the same way you get flattened by them.” It works for this Hawks team.

I don’t think the Penguins had the wrong plan, even though they have maybe half of their strongest roster right now. You can’t beat the Hawks trying to be conservative, or trapping, or toeing carefully in the offensive zone. Give the Hawks too much space, doesn’t press their weak points.

You do beat them by going right at them. Trying to get speed to the outside, which the slower-than-accustomed Hawks defense can’t really deal with. You get your defense involved, ahead of forwards the Hawks might have left too high. You make the same, short passes at your line that the Hawks do at theirs to bypass the third forward and possibly a pinching d-man.

The problem though, is that if you don’t take the chances that creates, or the Hawks are at the absolute top of their game, or your goalie isn’t anywhere near his, or you go just a touch overboard, or some combination thereof, you’re going to turn the neutral zone into a runway for the Hawks. While they may not have the wheels out of the back they used to, they have more than enough d-men who can pass their way out of trouble if you give them the space.