You need consistent contributions from your leaders and star players to get you to the playoffs. You bank on their efforts to win a game or two for you in the playoffs. You get a hot goaltender to steal a few, or even an entire series, from time to time. But you’re not winning the grand prize unless […]

We could talk about the Penguins’ best players finally being their best players. Or about their rookie goalie all but locking up his spot in the crease for at least the rest of Pittsburgh’s playoff run. Or how Olli Määttä is recovering from his flaws while producing a second consecutive, very solid game in Trevor Daley’s absence. How about Kris Letang […]

Not many Stanley Cups were won without facing a single elimination game. The most recent team to carry out the feat were the 2012 Los Angeles Kings, who hoisted the Cup after dropping just four games along their memorable ride. Then, for their second dance with Lord Stanley, the Kings had to come out on top of three […]

The Penguins-Lightning series’ opening game was probably the weirdest game we’ve witnessed in a while. It was nasty out there, people got hurt, returned to play or got carried out on a stretcher. There were some scary sights. If only the Penguins’ big guns Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin presented a comparable threat. Crosby and […]

Hockey today is a lot different from what it used to be 30 years ago. It has even changed a lot over the course of the last five years. Fights have plummeted, there are less incidents requiring the league to engage supplemental discipline and the enforcer type-of-hockey-player is a threatened species, a dinosaur from the […]

The series is tied and the team is back to its Penguins identity. They don’t get rattled, they stay composed. They have quality players on all their lines and pairings. They have an all-world goaltender in the making. They have a stifling penalty kill, that has allowed just three powerplay goals against in 7 playoff games, […]

Granted, Olli Maatta has been through a lot: multiple shoulder surgeries, a procedure to remove cancerous tissue from his thyroid gland, the mumps and a back-ailment after being unkindly pushed into the board-door by Minnesota’s Nino Niederreiter, you name it. All of it within the last two years. All of it before turning 22 years old. […]