http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Meanwhile, in that charmed third of the Pittsburgh professional sports landscape where champions who act like champions go about their business with minimal hysteria, the Penguins engaged a low voltage version of the Tampa Bay Lightning Wednesday night with evident indifference.
Peter Diana/Post-Gazette
Penguins forward Jordan Staal is stopped by Lightning goalie Mike Smith during Wednesday's game at Mellon Arena.
Not even the prospect of surrendering second place in the Eastern Conference standings to the surging Buffalo Sabres, who were busily flogging Florida's other NHL franchise four hours north of here, could prevent the Penguins from the kind of inexplicable sleepwalk that has become such a maddening part of their repertoire.
"If there's any guy in here who believes that that's the way we're supposed to play," said Sidney Crosby, "then ... "
Yeah, then something, and it's not good.
But when the playoffs start in 13 days, nothing that happened Wednesday night at Mellon Arena will be remembered for its lingering impediment qualities, yet it was just the kind of performance that always keeps the franchise's most earnest followers within one baby step of outright panic.
Still, the organ-I-zation deserves better than that, by any fair assessment.
Here's a defending Stanley Cup champion that is likely to follow up with a 100-point season. Here's a Stanley Cup champion that with this week's signing of 22-year-old defenseman Kris Letang, has its uber-talented core in contractual bedrock for the next four winters. Here's a champion that somehow doesn't have to issue repeated notices of official disappointment with the post-midnight adventures of its leading swashbucklers, that somehow doesn't have anyone posting moronic tweets insulting the fan base.
But enough about the NFL team's voluntary offseason debauchery.
In a week in which the Pirates, on the edge of their 18th nervous breakdown, dispatched a posse of players to their minor leagues with names barely more obscure than their own starting lineup, the talent and professionalism under the roof of the doomed Mellon Arena is a relative sports oasis as March turns to April.
All that said, you have to know that Penguins general manager Ray Shero, a good friend of Steelers director of football operations Kevin Colbert, has to look at the pronounced pickle the Steelers are in and the dank well in which the Pirates find themselves and whispers under his breath, "There but for the grace of God ... "
Peter Diana/Post-Gazette
Penguins forward Craig Adams tackles Lightning goalie Mike Smith.
That psychological caution probably shortchanges his franchise as well. Let's not take for granted the robust health and mental fitness of these Penguins, who'll open a new building in the fall that promises to be the stage of some of the world's best hockey and best hockey players. No one needs a ton of persuasion to consider the notion that we're looking at the front edge of dynasty here, but as hockey is a funny game, this dynasty had to wait until the Tampa Bay Lightning left town, the losers-of-7-of-their-past-9 Tampa Bay Lightning.
With two of their top five scorers unavailable, the Penguins still probably cannot plop their 2-0 home loss to the going-nowhere Lightning Wednesday night on the training table next to Evgeni Malkin and Sergei Gonchar. Dan Bylsma's team has enough power and guile even without its gifted Russians that it should not succumb to the gathering brilliance of young Steven Stamkos, and yet that's exactly what it did.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that, for the moment, Stamkos, the 20-year-old Ontario native, is the NHL's leading rocket scientist. He seems the most likely human to come away from this hockey season with the Rocket Richard Trophy, emblematic of the NHL's top goal-scorer. He's still one behind Sidney Crosby, but his 46th of the season erected a 1-0 lead and tied Washington's Alexander Ovechkin for second. Stamkos assisted on Tampa's second goal, the one Steve Downie rang off the far post in the first minute of the second period. Stamkos is Lightning hot, with 21 goals and 20 assists in Tampa's past 30 games.
If you had an obstructed view of recent NHL statistical history and could see only the numbers from Feb. 17, 2009, forward, you'd find that no one has more goals in that period than Steven Stamkos.
The Penguins played just well enough against him to get booed off the ice last night. And that's fine. But take a look around, and count your blessings.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com.
Penguins Plus, a blog by Dave Molinari and Shelly Anderson, is featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.
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