The Pittsburgh Penguins are finally healthy, for the most part, with the return of Sidney Crosby. Besides Crosby, the Pens also got the services of Zbynek Michalek back into the lineup, which is great for the defense and more importantly his blueline partner, Paul Martin, who had been struggling without him.
The Pens elected to play Sid with his old line-mates of Pascal Dupuis and Chris Kunitz. That line is solid and has been very productive. That being said I loved when head coach Dan Bylsma put Crosby out there with Evgeni Malkin and James Neal.
The depth on this Pens team is sick. You would have to go back to the early 1990's to find more talented Pens teams and that's only because they had Mario Lemieux. On most nights the Pens are going to roll out with lines that look like this:
Kunitz-Crosby-Dupuis
Neal-Malkin-Sullivan
Cooke-Staal-Kennedy
Asham-Park-Adams
That's sick-nasty!
I still think that Rocket Richard contender James Neal will see extended playing time with Crosby. NHL defensemen and goalies might shit themselves seeing Crosby-Malkin-Neal coming towards them.
The Pens have a great balance of speed and toughness throughout the lineup. They can play any type of hockey and still be effective. They can play a North-South game, going back and fourth, trading scoring chances with teams. They can play physical, and they have the puck handling ability to play the cycle, your choice.
Hats off to Ray Shero and Bylsma for putting together such a beautiful roster. Great leadership on the ice, superstars, elite goalie, good blue-line, and superstars. What more can you ask for?
Besides Crosby, how about the seasons that Pascal Dupuis, Jordan Staal, Kunitz, and Kris Letang are all having? Career years for all of them.
Speaking of career years, Marc-Andre Fleury continues to prove his critics and haters wrong. Fleury is 11-3-1 with a G.A.A. of 1.90, 2 shutouts, and a save % of .93. Fleury usually doesn't play his best hockey until the end of the year. Right now Fleury is one of the league's leading candidates for the Vezina and Hart Trophy.
Fleury is the main reason the Pens can afford to trade scoring chances with other teams. Some teams might be able to match the Pens in scoring but don't have the goaltending to win, some teams have a great goalie but they don't have a Geno Malkin or Crosby. Pens have it all. Mixed in with other All-Star caliber players.
The Pens are now the best team in the NHL. If they can stay healthy there is no reason why they shouldn't win a Stanley Cup this year.
More Crosby:
Apparently Crosby's return was a flop for Versus tv Network. Versus only drew about 200,000 total viewers for Crosby's return. Not very good. But NHL fans should worry too much because
1. Crosby's return was announced about 30 hours before face-off. Not a lot of time to build the game up.
2. The game was being shown locally to both Pens fans and New York Islanders' fans. That's going to effect the ratings.
3. Versus is never going to get big time ratings. I still know people who have never even heard of Versus.
4. Monday Night Football and WWE Raw were both on along with Monday night lineups for the top networks like CBS, Fox, and ABC.
5. It was against the Islanders.
6. I blame Jeremy Roenick.
ESPN bleeped Sidney Crosby. Crosby yelled "Fuck yeah" like he always does after scoring his first NHL goal in over 11 months. ESPN decided to bleep it out which is really funny because this happened on ESPN's live tv show "ESPN Gameday" this past Saturday:
After the game Monday night, Crosby sent one of the Pens equipment guys to get the game puck for Marc-Andre Fleury's 21st career NHL shutout. However, Rick DiPietro apparently stole the puck for Nilsson, who made his first NHL career start against the Pens.
DiPietro reportedly got injured picking up the pick. DiPietor is an asshole. Go Pens!
No comments:
Post a Comment