The Penguins, a team with immense offensive talent, can usually be relied on to fold up like a tent if they’re hit hard and forced into defensive games, which is usually what a postseason series against a genuinely good team amounts to. But after dropping Game 1 to the New York Rangers, the Penguins have won two straight games of the kind they usually blow
The 2008 Pittsburgh Penguins were a franchise trending back upward after a long stretch in the wilderness. They’d made the playoffs in 2007 ending a four-season drought that stretched over five years, thanks to the cancelled season of 2005. Even though Pittsburgh lost in the first round in 2007, the arrival of Sidney Crosby and his MVP award that year had put hockey back on the map in the Steel City
The Pittsburgh Penguins are rolling along to another big regular season. The Pens lead the Metropolitan Division by a whopping 16 points and are on track to be the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference. Pittsburgh has spent the portion of the regular season prior to the Olympic break shoring up some of the problems that tripped them up in last year’s playoffs, but also just got some bad news on the injury front.
Pittsburgh Penguins’ star Sidney Crosby doesn’t look to be any closer to re-taking the ice due to recurring problems with a concussion. Could the Penguins make a run at duplicating their back-to-back runs to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2008-09, including a championship the latter season, without their top dog? It’s hard to see how, but the Penguins closed January on a tear, winning eight straight games. Even though they’ve dropped two of the last three, those have all been on the road and the win was a not-as-close-as-it-sounds 2-1 win in Boston. TheSportsNotebook goes inside the win streak to see if it’s sustainable.