Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
Marc-Andre Fleury defends the net against Sean Avery during Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals of the 2008 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs at Madison Square Garden. The Penguins won the game, 5-3.
NEW YORK -- Soon after the Penguins clamped onto a three-games-to-none lead in their previous playoff appointment against Ottawa, Marian Hossa issued the nonsensical little observation that he was surprised that the fellas were ahead, 3-0, so early in the series.
Since I'm guessing that particular type of stranglehold only gets established upon the completion of Game 3, the splendid Penguin forward's introduction of any relativism to the point seemed displaced, but only temporarily, it turns out.
Now that this young and gifted and perhaps singular flock of flightless waterfowl have won their first seven playoff games, manhandling the New York Rangers to within a blade's edge of elimination on their own sheet of Madison Square Garden ice the other night, Hossa's comment has begun to make sense to me. I never thought the Penguins could win seven playoff games this early in the process, particularly these past three against the richly accomplished Blue Shirts.
This, after all, was supposed to be the hard part.
Asked in the Manhattan midday if he ever dreamed the Penguins would be undefeated three weeks into the postseason, Sidney Crosby said, "No, but it doesn't really matter; we've done a good job of focusing, and we've been putting one good game after another."
That's a matter of fact, but, with this rather stunning burst of spring dominance, Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury, Pittsburgh's Axis of Excellence, have driven the organ-I-zation right up against an urgent ponderable:
Are the Penguins this good, perhaps fatefully good, already?
Depends, you say, on how good is this good.
Well let's say it out loud then.
With that 5-3 skunking Tuesday of the desperate Rangers, your '07-08 Penguins became only the 11th team in the history of the contemporary playoff format to start the postseason 7-0. Of the 10 others to do so, eight became Stanley Cup champions.
All of which means, whether they like it or not, the Penguins are now at the point where anything less would constitute, to put it diplomatically, an unscheduled landing.
What must it be like to be 20, 21, 23 years old (Crosby, Malkin, Fleury) and have that kind of reality skating figure eights on the rink in your brain?
How do you keep your thoughts on the intricacies of the power play rather than on the inevitable pool party featuring Lord Stanley's Cup?
I didn't put it that way to Sidney yesterday, but he answered it indirectly after practice in the world's mostly empty arena.
"The best way is to realize how hard you work to win each game," said The Captain, who can't buy a legal drink until August. "You don't want to overlook things. When you realize how hard you work to win, you don't want to get burned by looking ahead."
Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
Evgeni Malkin, middle, celebrates with Georges Laraque, left, and Petr Sykora after Laraque's goal in the first period last night at Madison Square Garden. Malkin had an assist on the goal and also scored twice to help the Penguins take a 3-0 lead in the series.
The Rangers will construct another test of the Penguins' composure and resolve tonight in Game 4, but even some shaggy loss at this point isn't likely to trigger unexpected turbulence in Michel Therrien's team.
"These are young guys who learned a lot from last year's playoffs," Therrien said yesterday, referring to a Senatorial dismissal after five games. "They've stuck to the philosophy that we're not going to get overly excited when we win and we're not going to overreact when we lose. That was a huge win the other night, a huge game, but we had dinner all together afterward, and I could see they were calm."
During late night dining at Le Parker Meridien on West 57th then, the head coach could sense among these Penguins a quality that never seems to get discussed enough in the mania of any postseason.
"They're much more mature than last year," Therrien said. "They've got way more composure. This is a team that's comfortable playing with the lead in the third period, which is really a challenge for a young team. They believe in themselves. They believe in the way they play. And when they play with a lead they're very tough to play against."
This all might be overthinking it just a bit. The Penguins are hard to play against first because they have elite talent at too many spots, just as their impeccable penalty-killing sometimes gets exalted without enough focus on the best penalty-killer on the ice, who is, unquestionably, Fleury.
But maturity is something this team flat out declared it had in abundance at the start of these playoffs, without empirical evidence that it would soon become apparent.
"I just think we always realized that we'd learned some things last year," Crosby said. "Of course, you have to apply it, too, and obviously winning helps. When you find ways to win, you can gain a lot of confidence. This is just a team that has a great attitude, and we take a lot of pride in doing the little things that help each other out."
As yesterday's Penguins availability was winding down, one seasoned Gotham journalist asked Sid the "pinch myself" question, the one that goes something like, "What's it like to wake up on Broadway when you're 20 years old and you're the face of the NHL and you're about to eliminate the New York Rangers in the world's most famous arena."
Or something.
"I don't feel any different than when I woke up in Ottawa and it was 3-0," he said.
Except that it was so early, don't forget.
Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.
First published on May 1, 2008 at 12:00 am
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