Time to Believe?
How good is this team?

Two wins on two consecutive nights against the top teams in the Eastern Conference gave this Penguins fan pause. The fact that the Penguins won a 5-4, skate-and-score shootout one night before winning a 3-0 game "Devils style" made the wins far more impressive to me. Because, as everyone knows, when it comes to the Stanley Cup playoffs, championship teams have to be able to win games every which way. The offensive juggernaut champion Penguins of the early nineties won their fair of shootouts, but they also won tight-checking affairs that ended with scores of 1-0.

Did I just utter the word "championship teams"? More importantly, did I just dare—somewhat—to appear to compare this current Penguins team to the Penguins teams of the early 1990’s that won Stanley Cups? And, in what I wouldn’t have done, at least not quite like that, prior to those wins over New Jersey and Buffalo—am I now prepared to call the Penguins legitimate contenders for the Cup this postseason?

Allow me an honest moment to admit that rationality about one’s team’s postseason chances does not come easily for rabid partisans. This is why, for example, Paul Steigerwald, and perhaps the more optimistic of Pittsburgh media, wonder aloud "Are the Penguins the best team in the NHL?" and say things like "No team wants to face this team in a seven game series." Others go to a different extreme and point out every weakness with the current crop of Penguins, and while I don’t disagree with some of the comments, the degree of criticism makes me wonder by what divine miracle the Penguins have already accumulated ninety points.

Since I have not yet been swept up into the hoopla of the postseason (when my rabid partisan allegiance will kick into full gear for only the second time this decade), I want to take this opportunity to examine the question, honestly, "How are good are the Penguins?" Prior to the postseason, I want to review what I’ve seen so I can come to a more accurate judgment about my young Penguins. In basic terms often used by those who write playoff previews, I want to discover if my Penguins are "contenders" or "pretenders."

Facts pointing to "Contender"

Certain facts give merit to the idea that the Penguins are legitimate contenders for the Stanley Cup this season. The Penguins have two superstars in Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Like it or not, superstars help to win playoff games. Plus, one of the Penguins superstars happens to be the best player in hockey. While other teams have superstars, no other team has the best player in hockey.

In addition to superstar talent, the Penguins have depth. At present, the Penguins do not yet—not quite—have the same number of 20 goal scorers (five to six) as do the Buffalo Sabres and Carolina Hurricanes. No matter. A scan of NHL statistics reveal that the Penguins have the most 10 goal scorers in the NHL. And if one of the Penguins players who’s scored 15-16 goals this season (cough, Eric Christiansen or Michel Ouellet) gets hot, suddenly the Penguins have the same number of 20 goal scorers as do the Sabres and Hurricanes while still having more overall goal scoring depth.

Going along with depth and superstar talent comes the ability the Penguins have to skate. Put bluntly, the Penguins are fast. When the Penguins show up to play, they can outskate most teams. In addition outskating most teams, all four of the Penguins lines know how to cycle the puck beautifully. The Penguins, when applying their talents properly, can play a game that is tailor made for a long playoff run: they can roll four lines and allow their speed slowly to force other teams to commit infractions against them.

Before you hold up your hands and say wait, wait, you have to be done, you’ve listed all the Penguins’ obvious strengths, I have to say—No. Not yet. I haven’t. Because there are few things, probably not thought of by strengths by most Penguins fans who nitpick and criticize every thing about this team, that are actually strengths of the team.

Ryan Whitney and Sergei Gonchar—hear me out—have the ability to play defense in a type of way that is crucial in the postseason. Gonchar and Whitney can make the long breakout pass. Gonchar and Whitney can keep the puck in at the blueline at a critical time. Gonchar and Whitney make up the best offensive defensive punch the Penguins have had since the days Larry Murphy and Paul Coffey patrolled their blue line. (You know where Coffey and Murphy ended up, and you surely remember where the Cup ended up that season.)

The youth of the team, in many respects, is actually a strength of this team. In a Q & A on ESPN’s website, 18-year-old Jordan Staal states the team’s actual goal, of course, is to win the Stanley Cup. Pooh-pooh Staal’s naïve eighteen-year-old dreams all you want, the fact of the matter is that these Penguins have shown all year long that they aren’t interesting in meeting others’ expectations, but rather in meeting—and surpassing, if possible—their own expectations. I honestly believe the children—as I refer to the majority of the Penguins team—are so ignorant that they don’t understand this whole concept of "Well, you need to go to the playoffs at least once and learn what you’ll encounter before it’s your time." The kids don’t know anything except that they want to win and believe they can win, and the few veterans along for the ride are along for the ride precisely because they share the belief of the kids on the team.

Oh, finally, this Penguins team is a team. After beating the two best teams in the Eastern Conference, the Penguins didn’t play their best game against the Montreal Canadians. They returned to the bad habits of taking far too many penalties, which their penalty killers were a little too tired to kill effectively (facing a potent Montreal power play didn’t help matters, either). The Penguins gave up goals that allowed the Canadians back into the game frequently. And yet, no matter who lapsed—whether it was someone taking a penalty, the goalie giving up a goal, or something else—the Penguins just determined they would win the game, and of course, won the game. As a team, players pick up the slack when someone is having an off night, or something just isn’t clicking. That’s the sign of a complete team—and yes, complete teams win championships.


All the Signs Pointing to "Pretender"

For Penguins fans who dissect their team critically, or who just prefer to counter those who claim the Cup should be the Penguins this spring with a dose of harsh reality, this section is for you.

While by the only standard that counts (wins), the Penguins goaltending has been perfectly sufficient, perhaps more questions lurk about this position than any of the others coming into the postseason. Marc-Andre Fleury’s postseason history is not luminous, to say the least, and there are times when he’s shown an unfortunate penchant for giving up the wrong goal at the wrong time. The sunny-side optimists will note that Fleury is winning games at a rate not seen since the Penguins had a team that set the NHL record win streak at seventeen games. Still, in all fairness, the Penguins goaltending, come postseason time, as a question mark. Since goaltending is mental, for the most part, anyway, does Fleury have what it takes for the postseason?

Perhaps more so than the question mark that is Fleury is the Penguins’ defense. To be perfectly honest, aside from Whitney and Gonchar’s offensive prowess, the Penguins’ defensive unit does not exactly impress me. I wince when we’re forced to use Josef Melichar to shadow Jaromir Jagr (shutting Jagr down aside, it just doesn’t seem like something that should be in Melichar’s job description). While the Penguins have perhaps the offensive depth to roll five complete lines, it would be nice if they had anything resembling that glut of legitimate NHL forwards as blueliners. While the Penguins offense has been able to compensate—and often hide—the weaknesses of their blueline, at some point in time, one has to assume that legitimate NHL stars will figure out how to exploit the Penguins blueliners.

Moving on from personnel issues, there is the issue of the Penguins special teams. Fans who note the power play is ranked fifth in the league may wonder what my problem is. My problem is that the Penguins power play is only ranked fifth in the league. The Penguins would be wise to watch videotape of how the Montreal Canadians scored their power play goals and adopt a similar method (suited to their personnel, of course) to score their power play goals. This means, well, when the shooting lane is available, more often than not, you need to shoot the puck, particularly in the playoffs. While the Penguins’ penalty killing is ranked lower than their power play, my concern is not so much the ability of the Penguins’ penalty killers (at least not the forwards, who’ve proved to be decently adept this season) but of the Penguins' penchant to take too many penalties. As the games against Buffalo and New Jersey showed, the Penguins’ penalty kill works a lot better when the penalty killers don’t have to kill 10 penalties.

And, then, of course, comes the X-factor of inexperience. I’ve already noted that I actually view the youth of this team as a strength. The weakness comes in when one notes inexperience. Players who have played in the NHL playoffs understand that what flies during the regular season doesn’t typically work out in the playoffs. Call out the new NHL all you want, but you don’t typically squander 2 to 3 goal leads with regularity in the playoffs and expect to win games. Nor, honestly, do you typically come back to win games where you put yourself down by three or four goals. Teams with experience hold leads, and that works against the Penguins in two ways. The Penguins won’t be able to continue to erase multiple goal deficits, as they have done during the regular season, and they won’t be permitted to continue winning games where they regular relinquish leads. At least, the Penguins won’t be able to do these things with any regularity.

Oh, I forgot one other issue that Penguins fans have, but at the present moment, I’m not sure it’s so much a personnel issue as, perhaps, it is players who have been placed in the wrong role or on the wrong line. I’ve read criticisms of Recchi, Malone, and Ouellet as wingers on scoring lines—and I can’t say I disagree with these criticisms. I also can’t say that I believe that any team, given the current budget constraints of the NHL,will have a team as deep in scoring depth as did the Oilers of the eighties or the Penguins of the early nineties. When it comes to acknowledging the reality that the Penguins have a plethora of 10 goal scorers rather than 6 consistent 20 goal scorers to be placed on the top two lines, it seems to me that adjustments need to be made based on the opposition and a player’s current streak. If Eric Christiansen, for example, is better designed to play as a scoring winger against the Canadians, move him up to a scoring line for that game or series. Make adjustments based on who is hot and who can successfully match up against the other team. Whining that the Penguins’ young wingers are not yet the 20 to 30 goal men they may someday become is fruitless; the team must learn to deploy the personnel it currently has effectively.

The Conclusion
Contender or Pretender?

Before coming to a conclusion about whether these Penguins are contenders or pretenders, it helps me to remember the perspective of a rather cynical and jaded Penguins beat writer, who noted before the two games against the Sabres and New Jersey that, really, the games will probably just show which team was better on a certain night in March. Perhaps Post-Gazette beat writer Dave Molinari was guarding against overreacting. Overreacting to a strong showing which says the team is absolutely prepared to win the Cup this season. Or overreacting to a losing showing which said the team just wasn’t yet ready to contend.

Still, this Penguins partisan has to take the games against Buffalo and New Jersey into account. (Truth told, she wanted no part of the New Jersey game because she couldn’t believe this team could pull off back-to-back wins, so different stylistically, on consecutive nights. She is glad her young team proved her wrong.) This Penguins partisan also has to survey the rest of the NHL playoff field and realistically guard her heart. Truth told, she’s had to revise her expectations continuously this year. An outside chance at the playoffs, okay, the playoffs, okay, perhaps, maybe, home ice advantage, a 100-point season would be awesome but still….

As the season winds down, this Penguins’ fan has to place her team, honestly, somewhere in the middle of "bonafide Cup contender" and "total pretender." In truth, prognostications about where this team will go are what prognostications are—guesses.

The Penguins’ superstar talent, scoring depth, team chemistry, youth, vitality, chemistry, and yes, the fact that they’ve learned how to camouflage their weaknesses, are reasons why I believe no team is eager to play the Penguins in a seven game series.

The Penguins’ question marks in goal, their lack of depth on the blueline, the question of what happens if a significant injury occurs to a significant player at an inopportune time, as well as the fact that the Penguins might end up facing off against a team tailor-made to exploit every one of their weaknesses, including inexperience, leads me to be wary of expecting the Penguins to bring home the Cup this year.

Best-case scenario, realistically and to be honest? I can see the Penguins, drawing the right match-ups, not suffering significant injuries, making adjustments in the midst of a series and games, advancing to the Eastern Conference finals.

Worst-case scenario, realistically? I can easily see the Penguins, matched up against a more experienced opponent tailor-made to exploit their defense corps, being bounced from the playoffs in four or five games.

Frankly speaking, much of the fun of playoff season is not knowing what will come, and experiencing what will come as it does come. Having not been swept up in this excitement since the spring of 2001, I’m thrilled. Plus, back in 2001, when it came to Mario and Jags, they’d been there before, and I knew what to expect, generally speaking. What makes this ride so much more fun is that I don’t know what to expect of the kids.

Right now, however, the thing that strikes me is that even my worst-case scenario ( a first round playoff exit) is something that I would have viewed as a successful first step, a successful season, prior to the start of this year. What also strikes me is that I know advancing to the Eastern Conference finals, or even—really unexpectedly—bringing home the Stanley Cup—will not have occurred due to divine intervention. There won’t be miracles when the time comes for this assembled talent to start showcasing its talent in the NHL postseason; there will just be talent doing what talent does at the time when it most matters.

At the moment, contender or pretender is, for sure, a question to ponder. For this fan, though, I’m just grateful it’s a question that I can ponder, this season, of the Pittsburgh Penguins. And when it comes to playoff time, well, no matter what happens, as the actual games themselves are being played, that’s when I will have to throw that "contender or pretender" question to the wind and just allow myself to be caught up in the excitement of the Pens—and yes, believe.

Ah. I love playoff hockey, and I’ve missed my team’s presence in the postseason. Because, once the Penguins are in the playoffs, for those games, I may as well let myself be captivated and believe.

But first—how about the team gets itself in playoff order in the remaining games prior to the postseason?