Broken Beat and Scarred-Pens Die Hard

Well, as I said in my post to start the playoffs, it is a roller coaster ride all the way. When the Penguins won their double over time game to take a commanding 3-1 lead in the series, many were already worrying about who our second round opponent would be. Guilty as charged! Now, after a nauseating implosion on home ice Saturday, and another loss in Tampa to force Game 7, many are planning the demise of the Penguins on Wednesday night. Not guilty. Don't get me wrong, I am feeling tighter than a frog's ass right now, and that is waterproof, BUT it only takes one win to move on to round two. Don't get me wrong here, my concerns are many. The largest concern is that I believe that this healthy Lightning team is simply better than the Penguiins team without Crosby, Malkin and Cooke, and that our hope was that our goaltending and defense would be better than theirs. As it turns out, their goaltending and defense have both been better than ours. Given their obvious talent superiority up front, the Penguins ONLY chance was to be better on the blue line and between the pipes, and that simply has not happened. That does not mean that it cannot happen on Wednesday night though. My other concern is actually with Bylsma at this point. I love the guy, and think he should win the Coach of the Year based on the regular season performance. However, I am discouraged by the lack of changes in the lineup to try and get something going here. The Lightning are all over the front of the cage, as the Pens only have one defenseman in the lineup who can regularly make the opposition pay the price for being in the blue paint. Niskanen and Lovejoy are softer than the contents of a 90 year old man's pants for Christ's sake. Why not let Engelland have a go with Lovejoy? You won a lot of games with that combination, and he just might hit someone in front of the net.....on purpose. I also cannot understand how you keep essentially the same lineup up front. The power play is 1 for 29! It feels like my kids were in diapers the last time I felt good about the Penguins even getting a power play. The only two power play goals I remember lately had Eric Tangradi camped in front of the net. Hey, I think Chris Connor did an admirable job playing an energy game for much of the latter half of the season, especially since he is too small to ride the JackRabbit at Kennywood. And yes, he scored a garbage goal late on Saturday, when the only people who still cared were the CEC employees who wanted the game to end so they could go the fuck home. But do we really think the series will hinge on this guy so much so that we cannot try to see if the net front precense of Tangradi could generate, uh you know, one of those, ummmm, oh yeah, power play goals?? Come on Disco, when you cannot score more than 2 goals, and your PP is an abortion, do you really think we cannot risk making a lineup change? Finally, the guys they count on to come up big, have come up SMALL. To win a series you need your best players to be the best players, and the Penguins have not gotten that consistently from the likes of Kuntiz, Letang, Fleury, Martin, Neal, all of whom I love. And Kovalev, whenever this run ends, I will be ther to make sure that your pasty white lazy ass gets on the plane and gets the hell out of town! Sounds impossible, right? Feels a bit too much like the feeling going into Game 7 last year against Montreal, and we all know how that turned out...............maybe the Penguins have finally been worn down by playing playoff type games since January, and this is inevitable............Despite all of the above, I expect the Penguins to do what they have done all year when their backs were to the wall. They will prove all of the experts, who cannot stop fellating Tampa since Saturday, wrong by winning Game 7 on CEC ice for us all to savor. I am going to invoke some of my 2009 mojo with Metallica's Broken Beat and Scarred.......Pens die Hard! Keep the Faith Baby!