The March of the Penguins

Back at Christmas time I posted a meme and one of the questions was "What I wanted for Christmas". My response was "Would it be too mach to ask for the Penguins to make the playoffs". Apparently it wasn't too much to ask, because I finally got my Christmas present, Yes my Pittsburgh Penguins are in the National Hockey League Playoffs!

At the time they were lounging around 12th place in their conference (you have to be in 8th or better to make the playoffs) and though they were doing much better than their last place 58 points of the previous season (they are at 101 points now), with 15 teams in their conference, they still weren't anywhere near a playoff birth. Since the all-star break they have been absolutely stellar though, and have seen a very busy March schedule where they managed an amazing 12 and 5 record for the month, guaranteeing them a place in the playoffs. Right now they hold a tenuous 1 point lead in their division with 3 games remaining in the regular season and though they may not be able to hold onto that 2nd place spot in the conference, due to the fact that their remaining schedule is with much tougher teams, than the team that they are ahead of right now, they will manage to finish no worse than 5th in their conference. Still quite a turnaround from last year.

I've been waiting a long time to put up this post. I'm a little superstitious when it comes to my sports, and I didn't want to jinx them. If I tune into a game late and my team is winning, but then they start loosing after I've started watching the game, I will change the channel, figuring it was me that brought them the bad luck. Silly? Perhaps, but these superstitions were formed at a young age, when I spent many winter days on local ponds with other youths trying to "put the puck in the net", or in our case, the piles of snow that served as goals since we didn't have the real thing. The rule was whoever scored had to be the one to dig through the snow to find the puck so that the game could continue. If you had a really good slap shot you could sometimes blow the puck right through the "snow goal" to keep yourself from freezing your hands, having to dig through the cold snow afterwards to find the puck. I remember getting up early in the morning and lacing up my skates (with bread bags inside them to keep your feet warm), and skating up the road to one of the local ponds where all my friends would gather for the days games. We lived on a dirt road that would freeze in the winter and you could actually skate on it, so I could put on my figure skates at the house, no I couldn't afford hockey skates, but that was ok, since most of the kids didn't even have real hockey sticks, I was one of the few that did. Often these games would last all day and well into the night, if the moon was out enough to see by. We would return home well after dark, ravenous, having not eaten all day, and exhausted from the exertions of skating all day, and absolutely ready to get up again tomorrow and do it all over again. These memories are where my superstitions and my love of the game were formed and are held very dearly to this day.

I don't know how far my Penguins will make it through the playoffs, I guess my only wish right now is that they make it through the first round. With players like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jordan Staal and Marc-Andre Fleury they sure seem to have the talent to go far in the playoffs, but you never know when they are going to run into a hot goaltender that can shut them down. This season very few teams have been able to totally shut them down and no deficit seems too much for them to overcome. Last night they played the Toronto Maple Leafs, and though "the Leafs" had a 4 to 1 lead in the second period the Penguins were able to storm back and score with 4 seconds left to tie it up and send it to overtime. The Leafs did eventually win that game in overtime (after a long delay because of a medical emergency in the crowd, I guess a fan got too excited), but they sure are fun to watch. Many of the Penguins away games have sold out, even in cities with teams that haven't been selling out, as it seems the rest of the hockey fans around the league want to come out and see these phenomenal young stars play. So even if you aren't a Penguins fan or don't even care about hockey or sports in general, I suggest if you get a chance to see the Penguins play, you do so, because with this team, hardly a game goes by without some miraculous, impossible goal being scored and no game ever seems over or out of reach until the final horn blows... "Lets Go Pens!!!"