Pittsburgh Penguins: Emergence of a Stanley Cup winning team –NHL Special
If there was one team right now that you would bet everything on in the National Hockey League (NHL) as the 2011-2012 regular season quickly comes to a close, it would definitely be the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The amount of talent in Pittsburgh is just amazing when comparing them to other franchises around the league since mostly all clubs have a single leader, known as the face of the organisation, or even an unstoppable duo, but Penguins have much more. They
have the fantastic four.
Sidney Corsby, Kris Letang, Evgeni Malkin and James Neal make Pittsburgh what they are now by leading the club to 11 straight wins and bouncing back after a single loss in a huge way, annihilating basically anything thrown towards them.
With most of the season being led by Evgeni Malkin, the top NHL scorer at the moment with 93 points was able to keep Pittsburgh in the Eastern Conference top spots, but now, having all their best players back, healthy and ready to go, Penguins are a whole
new team.
Letang and Crosby made a recent comeback after missing a good chunk of the season with the captain player being out of most of it, but their return has definitely had an immediate impact seeing where the team is now headed.
"I just want to make sure that I am getting better and feeling better each game," Crosby said. "As a group we played really well here in the last few. Most of the time we've done some really good things. So, we just want to keep building off that."
Malkin has 43 goals and 50 assists and is easily working towards being the first player this season to reach the 100 point mark in 65 games played so far.
James Neal is consistent as ever with 72 games played and 72 points (35 goals, 37 assists) under his belt while Kris Letang has 34 (9 goals, 25 assists) in 44 games. Crosby, having played only 12 games this time around, already has 21 points and with 19
of them being assisted, the young captain looks to be making others take the shots and rather is focusing on setting them up instead.
Pittsburgh also has decent goaltending ability with Marc-Andre Fleury in-charge, but could face some issues with the lack of proper backups to take the scene over when needed.
A big problem some teams face when headed into the playoffs as one of the top clubs is the lack of teamwork amongst players in order to shine above the rest, but what we see in Pittsburgh is the exact opposite.
There are very few teams in the NHL that have a working attitude like Penguins do and it can be seen in their each and every single contest.
While Pittsburgh, like any other team, is not totally unbeatable, playing against the Penguins requires a whole new level of determination and prior planning because if the fantastic four get going, slowing them down is close to impossible.
With the Penguins currently playing like hockey gods, they could be taking over the New York Rangers for the Eastern Conference and Atlantic Division top spot and be the second team to clinch the playoff spot.
Seeing a quarterfinal series with Pittsburgh Penguins going up against Philadelphia Flyers, it would be hard to follow anything else going on in the postseason.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
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