A tough night for Pittsburgh in Ottawa last night. The Penguins had Max Talbot and Sergei Gonchar back and they still blew an early lead to the Senators. Pittsburgh looked tired. It could just be the time of season or it could be all of the injuries the healthy players have had to compensate for [...]

Forbes released their annual NHL franchise valuations and things actually look pretty good for the league. Or at least for some of the franchises. The average operating profit was $6.1 million, aggregate income increased, as did average franchise value. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an across the board thing for the all of the franchises. While successful [...]

There were some interesting moves yesterday. The Caps waived Chris Bourque for salary purposes, hoping he would sneak through into the AHL. He didn’t and wound up claimed by the Penguins. Bourque is bummed, yet psyched. Bourque has a lot of upside. He’s looked great in the AHL, and while he’s small, that smallness has [...]

I like when training camp starts because it puts a real spotlight on coaches as everyone tries to figure out if successful coaches will be able to maintain their pace and if unsuccessful coaches will manage to turn things around. Penguins coach Dan Bylsma would probably be considered a successful coach, what with his Stanley [...]

Tim Panaccio looked at some of the line combinations coming out of Flyers training camp. It looks like Claude Giroux is going to spend a lot of time with Daniel Briere, making for a fast, dynamic, and small line. The interesting (and unsurprising) thing is, is that Briere doesn’t see size as an issue, pointing [...]

One way you know it was a great game seven is that there just wasn’t much to say about it. It completely spoke for itself. The Penguins were flawless for two periods and strong enough for the third. Defenseman Brad Stuart, whose turnovers and pinching led to both game seven Penguin goals, says he’d like [...]

So tonight’s the night for Detroit or Pittsburgh. Tim Panaccio says the Penguins need a role player to step-up and pull a Ruslan Fedotenko circa game seven of the 2004 Stanley Cup finals. I think Fedotenko, who now plays for Pittsburgh, is a logical candidate for that role, but maybe it’s too obvious. Meanwhile, moving [...]

Fantastic game six last night. And for all of the talk about Detroit’s defense driving their offense, Pittsburgh did a tremendous job, at least for the first two periods, of letting their defense be a catalyst for their offense. Mike Heika said the game deserved to be on NBC. I think NBC should show the [...]

I’m not sure tonight’s game six is going to be the Detroit cakewalk everyone seems to think it will be. The big factor working in Pittsburgh’s favor? Getting away from those Joe Louis boards, which they never seemed to adjust to or to be prepared for. The big difference in Detroit’s game five rout was [...]

So what did Pittsburgh do right in their win over Detroit? Quite a few things. Their powerplay was finally effective against the Wings. They managed to get pucks deep in the Red Wing zone. They kept the Zetterberg/Lindstrom match-up out on the ice for longer shifts, plus lots of ice time in general. I think [...]