Penguins Making Super Bowl Week Easy

As a sports fan, there is nothing better than having your favorite team in the Super Bowl. It is so to speak, sports nirvana.

Unfortunately, as former Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz frequently reminded me, you do not get something for nothing in this life. The cost of that Super Bowl glory is the interminable two week wait leading up to it. One minute you are celebrating the thrill of reaching the summit of the sports mountain; the next you are stuck in a two week abyss of no football.

Compounding the misery is the non stop dissection of the event by the various and bloated talking football heads; supplemented by a steady does of rumor, innuendo, and pointless gossip. Everyone and their mother is on TV or the internet with their own useless analysis and meaningless predictions. Let’s face it, the average human being is not equipped to handle 14 days of Deion Sanders, Keyshawn Johnson, and Steve Marriucci.

The oversaturation of pointless news and gossip reached a historic low point today when it was reported as breaking news that Ben Roethlisberger was seen drinking with teammates at a piano bar on Tuesday night. Unless Ben singing under the influence is consider a potential felony this is a total non story. Unless of course its Super Bowl week.

Maybe I’m just spoiled after three Super Bowl trips in six years but I frankly can’t stand it. Fortunately I have the perfect cure. It’s called Pittsburgh Penguins hockey.

The Penguins are doing a phenomenal job keeping my mind of the Super Bowl week abyss. Instead of being immersed in the endless minutia of Super Bowl week, I’m watching perhaps the gutsiest regular season performance in the history of our beloved hockey team. And I’ll be doing so right up through Sunday afternoon. Instead of eight hours of senseless pre game babble, I’ll be watching Disco Dan’s boys taking on the hated Washington Crapital’s in a matinee special.

By all accounts, the Penguins should be in free fall right now. In case you did not get the memo, they have played the last ten games without the world’s best player, a young fellow named Crosby, and the last five games without his superstar sidekick Evgeni Malkin. To up the ante on Tuesday night, Jordan Staal decided to go all Brent Johnson and punch out a Ranger forward, thus earning an early shower.

If I had told you after the winter classic that the Pens would be without Sid for ten games and Geno for five of those games, would you in any way, shape, or form believed they would earn 13 points?

I’m not above admitting that I would not.

With this performance, the current group has redefined the image of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Our boys have always been thought of as a run and gun, offensive skill team. They’ve never been considered a team that wins games with defense, physicality and grit. At least until now.

All of a sudden the Pens are winning games because Max Talbot and Matt Cooke are running guys all over the ice, Zbynek Michalek and Brooks Orpik are dominating the defensive zone, and Brent Johnson is punching out Ricky DiPietro. Okay, the last part is more of a bonus parting gift but you get the point.

And think, some idiot on this blog keeps insisting that this team has too many grinders and not enough scoring wingers. Blasphemy.

Anyway.

Two months ago, I wrote a blog overflowing with praise for the Steelers brilliantly gritty victory in Baltimore. The game was the classic embodiment of Steeler football. The team battling for 60 minutes through a brutally physical encounter and all but willing themselves to victory. It was men pushing themselves beyond the limits of human endurance for nothing more than one regular season victory. I was so fired up afterwards that I could not sleep until 3am.

I had nearly the same feeling after the Penguins gutted out a 4-3 win at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night without their top four centers (including Mark Letestu). Oh and after spotting one of the league’s best goaltenders a 2-0 lead. The Pens just refused to quit, right up to the point where a rookie with less than ten games of experience scored the game winning goal in the shootout. It was quite frankly a “Steeler-like” performance.

I love the Steelers and the Penguins but I sometime marvel at how different they are. Steeler football is so emblematic of Pittsburgh. It’s about brutal physicality (except when it angers Roger Goodell), hard work, and an overwhelming desire and will to win. It’s rarely pretty; a fact we were comfortable with long before Mike Tomlin clarified that style points do not matter.

The Penguins on the other hand have been considered a brilliantly talented, finesse team pretty much from the day they were raised to prominence by a quiet French Canadian simply known as Le Magnifique. Go back and watch Hockey Night in Canada’s coverage of Lemieux’s mind numbing playoff goal against Ray Bourque and Boston in 1992. The announcer sums up the perception of Penguin hockey perfectly when he asks, “Have you ever seen such finesse?”

That’s not to suggest in any way that the Pens are not tough. Ulf Samuelsson was tough. Rich Tocchet was tough. Ryan Malone played a playoff series with a broken nose. We know all about the likes of Cooke, Brooks Orpik and Mike Rupp. Hockey players frequently play through injuries that would keep a good accountant in bed for weeks (hypothetically).

That said, when you think of the Steelers, you think of Jack Lambert or James Harrison, covered in blood and driving some poor running back through the turf. When you think of the Pens, you think of Lemieux’s Jagr, Crosby, and/or Malkin undressing some poor defensemen and humiliating the likes of John Casey, Andy Moog, or whatever AHL caliber goaltender is suiting up for Philadelphia.

Steeler fans prefer a 7-3 victory behind a dominant defense to a 40 point, 400 yard passing explosion. Penguin fans prefer that same 7-3 score, with Crosby and Malkin tallying 5 points each. It’s a shocking dichotomy in our sports preferences.

At least until now.

I pointed out last season that the Pens have become one of the toughest teams to play against in hockey. It’s not just because of Deryk Engelland dropping the gloves two out of three nights. It’s because of fast, physical forwards who pummel defensemen on the forecheck. It’s because of big, strong and mobile defensemen taking out guys in the defensive zone. Heck, even our back-up goaltender is tough.

And did I mention that the Penguins are the top penalty killing team in the NHL? The Pittsburgh Penguins? What next, the New Jersey Devils in last place?

This is not necessarily new, it’s just that nobody noticed until the team’s two offensive superstars went on the shelf. The Penguins are not scoring nearly as much without 87 and 71 but they have not changed their system one bit. They continue to dominate on the forecheck resulting in a huge disparity in zone time. They continue to choke off scoring chances when the puck is in their defensive zone (without trapping by the way). And offensively they are now opportunistic. Not a word frequently used to describe Penguin hockey over the last 25 years.

The result is some of the grittiest hockey in Penguin history. The gold standard to me remains games six and seven of the Stanley Cup finals against Detroit two years ago. That said, this is a close second and it’s being accomplished with $17.5 Million of all world production in the press box. I don’t know that I’ve ever been prouder of our boys.

Dan Bylsma has risen to another level as a coach. And let’s be honest, he set the bar pretty high to begin with. I hate to poach quotes from Mike Tomlin but I can almost picture Bylsma telling his injury riddled team, “the standard is the standard.” Of course it does not hurt that Marc-Andre Fleury is playing perhaps his best hockey ever; and has to just to stay ahead of Johnson.

Let me be clear on this. As impressive as this run is, the Penguins are not going deep in to the post season without a healthy Crosby and Malkin. And I still think the team needs one more offensive winger to win a cup. You need grit in the NHL but you also need guys who can put the puck in the back of the net. Alas, that’s a subject for another day.

For now, I’m just enjoying this remarkable display of Steeler style hockey from the Pens. The fact that it keeps Keyshawn off my television for the better part of the week is just an added bonus.