Atlantic Shanny?

The Philly Inquirer gave a Brendan Shanahan update, in the next 7-10 days they say he'll make his decision on where to go. You don't have to be a geographer to see where he's rumored to end up..

Shanahan and his family live in New York City, fueling speculation that the free agent might sign with the New Jersey Devils to be close to home. In addition to the Devils and Flyers, Pittsburgh and St. Louis are among the teams that have inquired about Shanahan.

We hinted recently that the Penguins could use another skill winger and it still holds true. While Petr Sykora and Miroslav Satan should both be 30-40 goal threats this season, they're the beginning and end of the skill wingers on the roster and something Ray Shero will surely sooner or later address before the March trading deadline.

But is Shanahan the right man for the Pens? While he still does have a great shot and terrific goal scoring instincts, Shanahan's been a shell of his former power forward self for years. Plus he's almost 40 years old and over the past couple years the Penguins have seen up close and personal some of those old boys (John LeClair, Mark Recchi, and to an extent Gary Roberts) lose their effectiveness and production. So Shanahan would definitely could not be a 18-20 minutes a night pure top six winger for the Penguins scheme. He's not an "every-down back" as they say in the NFL.

Still it is intriguing, not many teams boast 600+ goal scorers on their rosters and adding a guy who netted 23 goals is never a bad idea, especially when your chief division rivals are looking to snag the same guy. It will bear a half-eye's interest in seeing where Shanahan lands. Here's to hoping it's not Philly or New Jersey (unless he's got nothing in the tank).

Schedule is out, schedule is out

View it here on NHL.com

Things that jump out

• Last year the NHL had all the teams end the season with a string of division games that set the stage for close finishes and exciting play. That is not the case this year, as just 4 of the Penguins last 20 games are against division opponents.
• So you'd think there'd be a huge chunk of divisional games somewhere in the middle, but there's not. Pittsburgh's longest streak of division games is just 3. By contrast, they'll host 3 straight western conference teams once over the course of the season. The idea to de-emphasize divisional matchups and let every team play every other team atleast once seems to have inserted some color and excitement in the schedule.
• Starting Sunday February 8th with the Red Wings coming to town, the Penguins are scheduled on Sundays six of the next seven weekends with matchups against Washington (twice), Dallas, Boston and Philadelphia. Any of those could be targets for nationally televised NBC broadcasts.
• The Penguins were lucky to play all but 5 games the Eastern time zone last season. That will not be the case this year. Throw out the Sweden trip and they're making west coast jogs to San Jose and Phoenix (in late October), Colorado (in January) and Dallas (in March). Nothing that will make the West coast teams cry, but the Pens will certainly earn some frequent flyer miles this season.
• Perhaps as a reward, there's a stretch of games starting March 8th (at the friendly confines of the Verizon Center in DC) to April 1st where the Pens play 10 out of 12 home games. The only other roadie during that time is the short trip over to Columbus.
• We touched on the European trip, last year we thought the NHL did Anaheim the injustice of making them play three more road games before going home, after they'd already been to England. That seemed excessive and perhaps took it's toll on them. This year the Penguins get almost a full week off after their Euro trip and then don't have an away game for another 10 days. Much more favorable, we'd say.
• The season finale is a game IN Montreal on Saturday night. You think the NHL is thinking that maybe it could be to decide the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference?

There will be plenty of time to pour over the schedule and offer oberservations, but that's what jumped out for the nowbeing.

Biggest game of the season...For now

The good news: The Devils have to play on the road the night before a game of huge importance
The bad news: They're playing in Long Island against a team that's dropped 8 of their last 10 and has scored a measly 3 goals in the past three games.

The Penguins are tied for first with the Devils in the Atlantic with 91 points. Both trail Montreal by one point in the race for the #1 seed. Pittsburgh has a game in-hand on les Habs and, in turn, Jersey has a game in-hand on Pittsburgh.

After yawning out a likely win tonight, the Devs will be 2 points up on the Pens. If Pittsburgh loses, they'll be down 4 points with 7 games to go. While that's hardly out of it (especially when everyone's playing intra-divisional games), it's a hard gap to maintain. And at that point the New York Rangers will probably be closer to catching Pittsburgh than the Pens to getting to NJ.

Still following? The bottom line is this is the biggest game.....For now.


We've broken the last part of the season into the 5 segments that flow into each other:

Saturday Mar 22: NJ

Monday 24th: @NYI
Tuesday 25th: @NJD

Thursday 27th: NYI

Sunday 30th: NYR
Monday 31st: @ NYR

Wed. April 2nd: Philly
Sunday 6th: @ Philly

Mirtle, Buccigross weigh in

Noted blog-ologist James Mirtle (MD) weighed in on the big issue that will dominate our summer: just how in the heck the Penguins are going to make this work...

But if you're looking for the window, it's small.

Case in point, the Penguins, who have two incredible stars complemented by some pretty nice young talent. Despite the relative youth of Pittsburgh's lineup, the fact that both Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are both going to command near-max contracts in the near future necessitates that the team-building process is sped up.

Forget the fact that this might be before their time — the Penguins' window is right now, when someone like Malkin can win a Hart Trophy and still be paid under $4-million next season.

Pittsburgh has $27-million committed for 2008-09, but there are about eight significant unrestricted free agent holes coming July 1, and Marc-Andre Fleury, an RFA, is due a raise. Come the season after next, 2009-10, and Malkin and Crosby are making $9-million a season, or about one-third of the Penguins' cap, and Jordan Staal is due a new deal.

There's no room, in other words, for a Marian Hossa, who will command an enormous deal as a 29-year-old UFA. Think $50-million plus over seven years and find a spot for that behemoth long term

Mirtle was probably citing nhlnumbers.com (a must read for NHL contract details), but if you look down the column for 08/09 contracts, their numbers tally nine players under contract for$26.8 million. But one can clearly see, as we did earlier tonight, that the Penguins do have 15 players (including possible farmhand Chris Minard) as being under contract. Tally up the cap hits (the number on the left) and that's where we got the $34 million figure. NHLNumbers is probably a little behind with the Gill trade and the site doesn't seem to have included players that will be under contracts on their entry year deals next season (Malkin, Staal, Kennedy, Letang, etc).

Not that what Mirtle writes is far off; yes Crosby, Malkin and Staal will be eating up a large chunk of the cap and Hossa will command a ton of money.

No one can tell what will happen in the future; case in point this time last year it was a "given" that Crosby would be signing league maximum and he didn't. Will Malkin sign for $8 million? $9 million? More? Less? No one knows and speculation on it is too hard to predict until it actually happens.

Mirtle went on to cite a recent John Buccigross column where Bucci actually seriously made a pitch for the Penguins to trade Malkin this summer. Hah!*

A lot of people point to Tampa Bay as an example why an NHL team can't spend such a huge chunk of their alloted cap space/budget on just 3 or 4 players. Those same people don't usually point out that Tampa was well under the salary cap due to be up for sale and couldn't round out their team very well.

Similiarly Pittsburgh is quite a bit under the cap. Their billionare owner has seemed to take bigger interest in the team now that: A)There's a new cash-cow arena on the horizon, B)The team is winning and C)It's a hot product, they're selling out every single night.

If Ron Burkle is really willing to take a little bit of a hit in the pocketbook (and for his bank account the word "little" should be stressed) for the short-term to keep the team intact before new revenue streams from the state of the art 18,000+ arena, the nucleus will stay intact and management should be able to surround more skill around their stars than the uncertain situation in Tampa.

At the end of the day, it's not how you spend it, it's who you spend it on. Some teams like the Rangers will give a combined $14 million on two players longterm (Chris Drury, Scott Gomez and Henrik Lundqvist). Philly's spending about $23 million longterm on 4 players (Daniel Briere, Mike Richards, Scott Hartnell and Kimmo Timonen). Pittsburgh's probably going to be in that neighborhood on three players, but those players are Crosby, Malkin and Staal. Pittsburgh's players are a lot younger and will easily outplay any of the above named

We're not predicting for sure the Pens can/should retain Hossa, but it might be a little more of a possibility than most think it is right now....Hey, Gary Roberts was running right back to Toronto or Ottawa just as soon as he hit FA too, right? Sure the situation couldn't be more different between an aging player and a superstar in his prime, but the point is almost everyone in the media proclaimed Roberts to be a rental, and he ended up back.


*Although, in a very brief moment of weakness, we must confess did think how it would be if Nashville offered Alex Radulov, Shea Weber, Dan Hamhuis and a 1st rounder for Malkin and Ryan Whitney's $4 million deal

Don't call it a comeback

When Sidney Crosby went down with a high ankle sprain, most thought the same thoughts when Marc-Andre Fleury suffered the same injury. Hopefully the Penguins could keep their head just above water until their #1 center and #1 goalie could return, went the hypothesis. Luckily Evgeni Malkin (27 points in 14 games of flying solo) and Ty Conklin (16-4-3!) did not harbor such thoughts. They have risen to the top in league categories--Malkin in points, Conklin in save percentage and have not just held the Pens heads above water, why they're powering the team towards the playoffs injuries be damned!

• Ryan Malone has been playing some inspired hockey as well. Maybe it's the recent birth of his first son, maybe it's realizing he could be cashing in on a pretty good payday this summer, whatever it is we don't care. Malone's been a force and has finally shown that he will be consistent in driving to the net, playing physical, getting pucks on goal and generally living up to his hype.
• How 'bout this stat line for the Sarge: 27:00 TOI, 1 assist, +2, 5 shots, 3 blocked shots and 2 hits. We'll take that kind of effort anyday.
• Colby Armstrong (who scored the ice-breaking first goal) threw 4 shots on net and really seemed to be making an effort to get off more shots. His empty net goal (the first in 16 games for him) seemed to have made a big difference in his confidence with the puck and tonight he really played well. Weird how something as simple as flippng a puck into an unmanned crease from behind the blueline can so postively effect a player, but it worked for Army.
• What else can you say about Ty Conklin. He's been terrific. Better than that. Early in the game, somehow, the Penguins gave up 3 clean breakaways. He Conkblocked the first 2 of them and probably let the third one in just to teach his team a lesson.
• For the opposition: David Booth has 18 goals this year, which is about 13 more than we here at TST would have guessed before this game began. Good for him for quietly having a good year. Also, Kamil Kreps also was good too when he had the puck, a lot of burst out of him. One gets the feeling that the Panthers have the makings of a good team, they just need a couple more pieces and some more experience and maybe they don't blow leads like their last game and this one.

The Rangers were up 5-0 on the Canadiens tonight, so them losing in a shootout must be something of a best case scenario for the rest of the Atlantic Division. Speaking of shootout losses, the Flyers decided to get in on that party too. New Jersey and the Islanders were idle, so a good night for the Pens who claw back up into a tie of first with the Devils (NJ holds the tiebrake based on better head to head record).

Can't Win 'em All....Pens lose

In our pregame post we said that based on the results of tonights Pens/Bruins and Devils/Senators game that Pittsburgh could potentially be either 5, 4, 3, 2 or 1 point up on the Devs, the closest chaser (for now) in the ever shuffling mix of the Atlantic Division...Well, it ended up in the worst case scenario as the Pens lost in regulation and NJ won. But, it's better to have a "worst case scenario" night in February rather than in April.

• The Bruins really set the tone in the first period, outshooting the Pens 13-4, out-working, out-skating, out-hustling and generally out-everything-ing the hometeam.
• Rough first period for the Sarge...First he misplayed the puck and PJ Axelsson sped away from him on a breakaway forcing a penalty. Then Gonchar turned the puck over behind his own net which led to the first goal against.
• Credit Jeremy Reich for the second goal, he got great position and knocked BGL over and then chipped a centering pass between Kris Letang's skates. Conkblock was caught trying to pokecheck and it was in the net by Vlad Sobotka. The Bruins lower liners made that play look fairly simple.
• Usually we'd feel pretty good going into a game knowing the Pens would spend 12:07 with the man advantage. But they only produced 1 goal on 7 shots. Which isn't going to get it done tonight or most any night.
• Other than Evgeni Malkin (the goal scorer) and Petr Sykora, no other forward really even looked like their head was in the game. Those two combined for 10 shots on net, the rest of the team only put 11 pucks on target.
• In particular, it seemed like Erik Christensen (who's been great of late) had a pretty brutal game. Penalties, bad puck decisions, missing nets--you name it and if it's frustrating he probably did it. Hopefully he puts this one behind him and can come out with a better outing tomorrow.
• Alex Goligoski had his NHL debut, and even though he only played just over 8 minutes (the Pens dressed 7 defensemen) he showed the wheels and potential that has the brass salivating. A couple of minor mistakes--as to be expected from a 21 year old professional rookie in his first game in the show--but overall he was as advertised. Dude is going to be a player in the NHL sooner than later.
• Conklin settled down. One really couldn't blame him for either goal, but it's worth noting:
• Marc-Andre Fleury made his first rehab start for Wilkes-Barre tonight and stopped 30 of 31 shots in a 3-1 win. That and a report that his ankle is feeling pretty good tomorrow morning is probably the best news the Penguins could hear right now.

A loss is a loss is a loss, there's no way around it. Give 100% credit to Boston; they had been in a slump recently but came out very strong early and definitely earned the win. One shouldn't take too much (positive or negative) out of just 1 game in a season of 82, but the Bruins definitely look like a team that should make the playoffs based off of the effort and performance they had tonight.

For the Pens part it seems like one of their uptempo, energy guys (Gary Roberts, Tyler Kennedy who scored a goal again tonight in his rehab with the Baby Pens) could have made a difference. Adding a player like that Crosby guy, especially on all those powerplays could have tipped the scales too..

But for now there's only if's and what could have been's. The Penguins lost and the Atlantic Division, once again, tightens a little more. Tomorrow nights game in Carolina, likely with Dany Sabs in net, becomes all the more important. An immediate chance for the Pens to regain their composure and wash the disappointing taste of a loss out of their collective mouths.

Gameday Preview: Boston

The boys look to cap off a perfect 4 game homestand tonight against Boston. The Penguins will be on the road for five of their next eight contests. Including tonight the Pens have 9 games in the next 15 nights, another point where the schedule picks up a little (they had only played 5 games in the first 12 games of February).

• The Penguins are 2-0 against Boston so far this season, both wins getting picked up by Conkblock. But it's probably worth pointing out that the player named #1 star of those games (Sidney Crosby and Gary Roberts) will not be in the lineup tonight.
• Tonight's game kicks off a 5 game road-trip for the B's, who played last night.
• Offensively the Bruins are in a little bit of a slump, scoring only 11 goals in their past 5 games (2.2 goals/game). Their record in that stretch: 1-4.
• 3 out of the 4 goals Kris Letang has scored have been game winners. Just wanted to throw that out there.
• Tonight is game 4 of the Kris Beech experiment, round 2. So far we've gotten just over 24 minutes of icetime and Beech has produced 2 shots on goal, is a +1 and, of course has 0 points. But this means we're one day closer to this whole damn thing being over and Beech either being a force for Wilkes-Barre or getting claimed and continuing his quest to play for every NHL organization this season.
• In the Atlantic watch: New Jersey (2nd place, 3 points back) is home tonight against the Ottawa Senators. No other teams are in action, guaranteeing the Pens will be in first tomorrow morning. But whether they're 1 2, 3, 4 or 5 points up on the closest competitor is a pretty huge swing for this time of year.

The Atlantic Division Tightens

Tight division: 3 points separate four teams in the Atlantic. Don’t look now but the New York Rangers have won 5 of their past 6 games and have inched back to the top of the shuffle to make this possible. Which puts even more weight on tonight’s game with the Devils. The Penguins are going to have to do the same thing they did last week to be successful: stay out of the penalty box, hope for a burst of production to break the Devils spirit by taking a 2 or 3 goal lead and then play a suffocating brand of defense to close the game out.

Roster shuffles: Alain Nasreddine was sent re-assigned to Wilkes-Barre, no surprise since the forwards are slowly becoming healthy and Brooks Orpik can rightfully shift back to defense. Jonathan Filewich and Ryan Stone also traded places. Disappointing and it remains unsure of what exactly Stone is going to bring to the table that Filewich hasn’t. Filewich looked the best out of all the recent callups (other than maybe Nathan Smith) so it’s hard to understand the motives on this decision. Are the Pens showcasing guys like Stone and Filewich, giving each a shot at a couple NHL games to dangle them as bait for the trade deadline? Stay tuned.

Fitting the pieces of the puzzle: It’s still unknown if Adam Hall (groin) will be ready to go tonight or if the coaches are comfortable enough with Kris Beech’s conditioning and game to have either in the lineup tonight. It’s been reported that Beech is very unlikely to play tonight, while Stone’s call up seems to indicate Hall will be out too. No point of summoning Stone to sit him, we suppose. Here’s how we’d set the lines for tonight:

Malone-Malkin-Sykora
EC-Staal-Talbot
Ruutu-Taffe -Armstrong
Stone-Smith-Laraque

Hardly a fierce lineup to be sure, but it’s one that should be hard-working and hard-nosed enough not to let up anything easy. Which is what you’re looking for with so many regulars out.

Hat Tricks, Hockey goalies, Beatings and Winning: Penguins Hockey

I openly wondered/question if the Penguins would be good enough to go on a serious winning streak that could catapult them into the playoffs. Perhaps it should be no surprise, after a 5th win in a row; that a team featuring the talents like Crosby and Malkin could fire off a bunch of wins in a row. But taking into account the injury bug that has put several key players on the bench long-term, well that’s an accomplishment.

Enter perhaps the most unassuming and unlikely stars in a while, Ty Conklin. The Conk is now a blemish less 6-0-0 with a 2.30 GAA and a 92.8% save percentage. On top of those numbers, he’s surrendered just 8 goals in the past 5 games. Pretty much every game in the last five he’s been the guy holding the often out-shot Penguins in the game and last night was no different when he stopped 33 of 35 shots his was.

The tide of the game was turned by Jarrko Ruutu’s pounding of pesty Darcy Tucker (more later). As predicted here, between the unusual circumstances physically and emotionally of the Winter Classic game two days earlier, the Penguins were a in a little bit of a rut last night. The score was tied 1-1 at the time but they were being badly outshot and in danger of letting a winnable game slip away. Enter Ruutu to provide a spark.

3 goals in the span of :48 seconds is unbelievable. That absolutely buried the Make Beliefs and ended any doubt of which team would get the win that night.

Brooks Orpik, we feel, is sliding back into favor with the coaching staff. He played over 20 minutes (first time in a while) and was a +3 on the night.

How about Evgeni Malkin’s first career hat-trick? Even more impressive, it only took 4 shots on goal to make it happen. That’s the kind of efficiency the Penguins demonstrated all night, scoring 6 goals on but 24 shots on target.

Rough night for Nik Antropov in the faceoff circle, he went 4 out of 16 draws. Very nice!

Looking Ahead:
``The Penguins have but 3 divisional games in the month of January, a good thing considering they have the worst divisional record in hockey.

``By contrast they have still 7 more games with SouthLeastern division opponents, who have combined for 197 points in 206 games (under 50% of possible points) and only have 1 team with more points in the standings than games played (which is Carolina, who’s not on the Pens schedule this month)

``For comparison the Atlantic Division has a combined 222 points in just 196 games and every team has more points than games played.

In conclusion, there are a lot of winnable games ahead, but let’s remember the trouble Pittsburgh has had winning against the Florida teams, particularly Tampa Bay, who’s always, in recent memory, seemed to have the Pens number.

Keeping pace with the Peloton

Perhaps it's the Bruins that fixes what ails the Penguins, for the second time in less than week the Pens beat the B's.

Tonight's thoughts:
--Coming into today, a mere 6 points in the standings is the difference for being 2nd place in the Eastern Conference (New Jersey: 41) and being 13th (Atlanta: 35). It kind of reminds me of cycling where the majority of the field is bunched together in the peloton. Some teams might break away, such as Ottawa but really you just want to keep up with the main group and not lose pace with the field, like Washington (30) has and Tampa (33) is teetering on.

--Taking these two points mean the Penguins are up to 8th in the conference...Pretty good considering they were tied for 12th when the day begun. 38 points through 36 games isn't ideal, but considering the injuries and inconsistencies suffered, at least the team is firmly in the peloton for now and hopefully can make a little run to establish themselves as a playoff contender in the second half of the season.

--The tightness of the conference also extends to the competitive Atlantic division. 5 points separates those pesky Devils from the last place tie of Philadelphia and NYI. In the other two divisions, there's at least 11 points from top to bottom.


NOTE to readers: Things may be a little slow around here for the next week, as the holiday season is amongst us (but I'll likely have a recap and thoughts about the Bruins game up tomorrow thanks to actually having to work)...Apologies to that for regular readers, but perhaps you should be spending less time reading blogs this week as you do hang out with your families and loved ones and enjoy the holiday. So season's cheer for a safe and awesome holiday to you all.

Hands off the button, Pens fans...for now

Ok, so it's not really time to press the panic button, but everyone knew the Penguins effort last night stunk. The harder question, it seems is "why". Really it only looked like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Gary Roberts were interested in playing last night. That's not going to cut it.

But, in the course of an 82 game season there's always about 5 games your team just dominates, 5 games and about 5 games where your team doesn't bother to show up. Chalk this one in the latter category.

In the bigger scope of things the Penguins still have two worries:

1)Not losing touch with the playoff race during Marc-Andre Fleury's 6-8 week injury
2)A shoddy divisional record.

The face-off factor recently compared the 2007-8 Penguins to the 2006-7 and noted that, after 30 games, this years group wasn't off pace. However, in a stretch from January 13th to February 18th last season's team captured an incredible 26 points out of a possible 32 (16 games). And then in the final 20 games of the season the team would only drop 3 games in regulation...Their combined record against Atlantic division opponents during this run was 8-2-1. Is this year's team capable of either such a run? Highly doubtful.

Right now the Penguins just need to weather the storm and hope when Fleury does return, his game is as sharp as it was before he left (stopping 86 of 90 pucks before his injury) and be the boost needed to jumpstart the team.

Going into the Flyers game tonight...

Things are still up and down and frustrating.

The Penguins come into tonight's matchup 7-6-1, good for 15 points in 14 games. Which is not that good.

They're tied for 3rd in the Atlantic (with a game in hand) with the New York Rangers.

Overall in the East, the Penguins are in a 4-way tie for 6th place. But the team in last place (fimiliar to see Washington) is only four points back, so things are much more clustered in the middle-to-lower part of the conference then up top, where Ottawa (26 points) and Carolina (21 points) are starting to break away from the pack.

Stats that will make a Penguins fan smile:

• -The Penguins are currently on a 13 game streak of scoring atleast one powerplay goal. As mentioned here, they can tie the NHL record of 14 games (held by the 1989 Penguins) tonight.



• -As you'd expect with a powerplay clicking like that, it ranks well. 3rd in the NHL at the moment at a rate of 24.3%.

-Quietly the penalty-kill is 8th best in the NHL, success rate of 86.4%

-Crosby has a 13 game point streak, and is 2nd in the league in scoring. Malkin is tied for 8th in the league in scoring.

-Guys like Brooks Orpik (35 hits, 27 blocked shots), Mark Eaton (10 hits, 39 blocked shots) and Robert Scuderi (27 blocked shots) have been stellar at their roles of low profile but highly effective defensive defensemen.

-Crosby has won 53.9% of his faceoffs, up considerably from last season.

Stats that have been making Penguins fans' blood pressure go up:

-The Penguins are -6 when considering their 5 on 5 play (24 GF and 30 GA).

-Jordan Staal has 1 goal and 1 assist through 14 games. And is only averaging 0:46 powerplay ice time per game.

-Mark Recchi is averaging 17 minutes of icetime and has 1 goal to show for it.

-Marc-Andre Fleury has been inconsistent.

-Ryan Whitney has 19 giveaways and 2 takeaways and hasn't shined like he did last year.

-Sergei Gonchar is 8th in the league with 22 "missed shots".



Up and down and up some more. Hopefully the boys can continue to right the ship. The Flyers are much different from the team that got beaten 8 times by the Penguins last year. Should be an intense and interesting game.

On Deck: 9 Straight Division Opponents

Starting Saturday, the Penguins start a stretch of 9 games in 18 days. (That's an average of a game every other day for you non-math majors out there). All of these games are divisional games.

Let me repeat: ALL OF THESE GAMES ARE DIVISIONAL GAMES.

Coaches and players often stress the importance of facing their divisional rivals, since it's basically a 4 point swing in each contest. That means, 4 points a game for 9 straight games is 36 point swing in shaping the division.

The next 9 games of this season will basically shape the way it's going to be for the Penguins. If they struggle, they will lose a lot of ground in what figures to be one of the toughest and most competitive divisions in the NHL. If they play about .500 hockey like they've done all season then things will like be clustered.

But if they can turn in solid efforts every night, get some goals from a forward not named Crosby, Malkin or Sykora (which hasn't happened since Jordan Staal scored his only goal of the year on 10/20) and rattle off a big win streak then this could give a little breathing room and instill in the confidence needed to feed off of for the rest of the season.

The upcoming schedule looks like this:

Sat Nov 3, 2007
Penguins at Islanders
A trip to Long Island for a game against the scrappier than predicted Isles.

Mon Nov 5, 2007
Penguins at Devils
A first look at the Devils new home.

Wed Nov 7, 2007
Flyers at Penguins
This game will be slightly more intense than the average game.

Thu Nov 8, 2007
Penguins at Rangers
3rd game in 4 nights and a decent amount of travel too.

Sat Nov 10, 2007
Penguins at Flyers
The Flyers are tops in the division right now, but a lot of hockey to go.

Mon Nov 12, 2007
Devils at Penguins
The start of a 4 game homestand and a rare 2 day break after this game

Thu Nov 15, 2007
Islanders at Penguins
Yet another game against the Isles.

Sat Nov 17, 2007
Rangers at Penguins
Yep, it's these guys again

Wed Nov 21, 2007
Devils at Penguins
Seriously this is 4th time in 35 days the Pens and Devils will have played