Tomorrow night we will begin to find out if the Penguins truly have another gear and after two straight trips to the Finals, simply need the high stakes/pressure of sports' greatest tournament to get their juices flowing. This Penguins team surely is battle tested, and experienced in the playoffs if consider the fact that they have won 30 playoffs games in the past two seasons, including two Game 7s in last year's post season. The Penguins will be led offensively by Sidney Crosby who won the Rocket Richard trophy this year, but more importantly to the task at hand, could have won the Conn Smythe in either of the past two seasons, being within a point of each of those trophy winners ' production. In addition, Evgeni Malkin has shown some signs of offensive life, and if he takes this post seasons challenge with the same level of intensity as he did last year on his way to the Conn Smythe, the Pens will be a force to be reckoned with. Some things to watch for in this series:
Scoring from the Penguins wingers-The wingers that comprise the current top wingers have not been tearing it up down the stretch scoring goals.........Sids top two wingers are likely to be Kunitz and Dupuis.....Kunitz when healthy has actually been the most productive of the top wingers, but he is nursing a shoulder injury..........Dupuis, despite having a career high 18 goals is really far more suited to being a premiere third liner, and has been stuck on 18 goals for a LONG time. With his pedigree it would not be out of question for him to not score at all in any particular series............Genos top two wingers will likely be Alex Ponikarovsky, who seemed like a great pickup, but only has 2 goals in his 16 games with the Pens, and Bill Guerin, who despite posting 21 goals this season, has mostly gone cold for the past month or so. I personally prefer Guerin on the top line with Crosby, but hey who the hell am I? The production of these wingers is critical for more reasons than the obvious fact that the winner of a game generally scores more goals. The main reason other than that would be the fact the Penguins built this team to win playoff series by using a three center model, Crosby, Malkin and Staal to wear down a team and create matchup problems with the third line. If the Pens need to put Crosby and Malkin together frequently because their top six wingers cannot finish plays, that third line match up nightmare that Staal, Kennedy, and Cooke present for the opposing team's third defensive pairing is eliminated;
Special Teams-the Penguins regular season woes on the power play for the past two years are well chronicled, but they found a way to get it done in the post season last year......To have success this year, they will need to duplicate that feat. Teams who are not dangerous on the power play will not go deep in the playoffs....in addition the PK unit will have to remain solid as it has been all season long;
Senators defense-With Anton Volchenkov and Chris Phillips, the Sens boast on of the best pairs of shutdown defensemen in the league, but are missing a piece to their second unit in Philip Kuba due to injury. Their 19 year rookie Karlsson has had a good year, but moving him up to the second unit should give him a steady diet of Evgeni Malkin, which hopefully the Pens can exploit....the Penguins need to forecheck hard, turning those D men around, making them turn and HIT them every chance they can..........losing Kuba may prove to be more costly to the Sens than losing Kovalev for the playoffs if the Pens can exploit that;
Scoring from the Penguins wingers-The wingers that comprise the current top wingers have not been tearing it up down the stretch scoring goals.........Sids top two wingers are likely to be Kunitz and Dupuis.....Kunitz when healthy has actually been the most productive of the top wingers, but he is nursing a shoulder injury..........Dupuis, despite having a career high 18 goals is really far more suited to being a premiere third liner, and has been stuck on 18 goals for a LONG time. With his pedigree it would not be out of question for him to not score at all in any particular series............Genos top two wingers will likely be Alex Ponikarovsky, who seemed like a great pickup, but only has 2 goals in his 16 games with the Pens, and Bill Guerin, who despite posting 21 goals this season, has mostly gone cold for the past month or so. I personally prefer Guerin on the top line with Crosby, but hey who the hell am I? The production of these wingers is critical for more reasons than the obvious fact that the winner of a game generally scores more goals. The main reason other than that would be the fact the Penguins built this team to win playoff series by using a three center model, Crosby, Malkin and Staal to wear down a team and create matchup problems with the third line. If the Pens need to put Crosby and Malkin together frequently because their top six wingers cannot finish plays, that third line match up nightmare that Staal, Kennedy, and Cooke present for the opposing team's third defensive pairing is eliminated;
Special Teams-the Penguins regular season woes on the power play for the past two years are well chronicled, but they found a way to get it done in the post season last year......To have success this year, they will need to duplicate that feat. Teams who are not dangerous on the power play will not go deep in the playoffs....in addition the PK unit will have to remain solid as it has been all season long;
Senators defense-With Anton Volchenkov and Chris Phillips, the Sens boast on of the best pairs of shutdown defensemen in the league, but are missing a piece to their second unit in Philip Kuba due to injury. Their 19 year rookie Karlsson has had a good year, but moving him up to the second unit should give him a steady diet of Evgeni Malkin, which hopefully the Pens can exploit....the Penguins need to forecheck hard, turning those D men around, making them turn and HIT them every chance they can..........losing Kuba may prove to be more costly to the Sens than losing Kovalev for the playoffs if the Pens can exploit that;
Goaltending-the matchup between Brian Elliott and Marc Andre Fleury will be a critical matchup to watch......Fleury has more wins, 37 to 29, but Elliott has a slight edge in save percentage at .909 to .905 for Fleury and in GAA with a 2.57 GAA to Fleurys 2.65.;
The Penguins defense-It has been porous at times this year, and again down the stretch............the Pens lost Gill and Scuderi from the unit that won the cup last year, but added Leopold, McKee and Goligoski.........for my tastes, Goligoski needs to be the odd man out....he CAN at times add some offense from the blue line, but not enough to cover for his recent defensive deficiencies.............Leopold could be a huge X factor...solid in his own zone, with very respectable offensive capabilities........folks, defense is often times a mindset and attention to detail.....gap control, simple plays, solid breakouts, being in the right position..the D needs to contribute offensively as well...the power play will go as Gonchar goes....last season Eaton chipped in 4 big goals....and Letang had on OT game winner...Letang needs to contribute this year on the scoreboard..........this team CAN play good defense, we are about to find out if it will;
Role players-Every championship team needs contributions from its role players....guys like Talbot and Fedotenko last year proved invaluable, and we need that again.....Mike Rupp with his size and ability to chip in some goals could be a critical player in crucial situations during this post season;
Coaching-It is tough to argue with Bylsma thus far as he took a tenth place team at Valentines Day last year to the Stanley Cup, and despite many of the criticisms posted here at times about this team the Pens did not suffer a horrible bout of the Stanley Cup hangover.....that said, I am not completely enamored with everything Disco Dan has done this season......the Pens do not seem capable of adapting to any team that tries to trap them in any way, and you saw more of it down the stretch as a result, keeping weaker teams in games with the Pens......and I am sorry, there is no excuse for a team with as much firepower as the Pens to struggle so much on the power play.....no he cannot go and play on the PP, but yes he could change the coach who has presided over a pathetic power play for two straight years or intervene in the strategies employed to find an effective balance............the Pens will need to be better in both situations to win the Cup again;
I like the Penguins to win this series in six hard fought, close games.................the way those games are played will give me a better feel for the long term prognosis here...............GO PENS
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