PITTSBURGH (AP) -With Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and several other players in their early 20s under contract for the next few seasons, the Pittsburgh Penguins appear to be in a position to be a perennial Stanley Cup contender for a while.
Here’s some advice from someone who knows: Don’t count on it.
Bill Guerin, the Penguins’ 38-year-old forward, is playing in his first finals since he was with New Jersey at age 24. Back then, he was certain he would reach the NHL’s championship series many more times, but it never happened until now.
The Penguins, who lost the finals to Detroit in six games last year, are down 3-2 to the Red Wings again going into Game 6 on Tuesday night in Pittsburgh.
Guerin has seen injuries, contract disputes, goaltending issues, major upsets and other assorted problems cause many a favorite to fall out of the playoffs long before the finals, so the Penguins shouldn’t assume they’ll automatically be there every spring.
The last two seasons, Pittsburgh has been extended to seven games only once during six conference playoff series.
s going to be sniffing around for championships for a long time because of the way they’ve drafted the last some odd years,” Guerin said Sunday. “But, you know, you can’t take opportunities for granted. You can’t think they’re going to come around every year because you can ask other older guys, they just don’t.”
Guerin, acquired in a deal with the Islanders at the trading deadline, is unsigned past this season. The Penguins have not yet said if they will offer him a new contract.
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CAPTAIN INTERN: Steve Yzerman has been in the shadows at the Stanley Cup finals, quietly working as a Detroit Red Wings vice president.
“My role is really just watching at this point,” Yzerman said.
The former Red Wings captain moved to the franchise’s front office after retiring three years ago.
“I participate in the daily running of the organization, but mostly I just listen and observe,” Yzerman said. “To see the results of different decisions over the last three years has been educational.”
Yzerman’s job, in essence, is a high-level internship.
In a few months, he will be running the show, and it will be one of special importance in his native Canada.
lt Lake City in 2002 but struggled in Turin four years later.
“We’ve got a list of players we’re looking at, and we’ll shorten the list to about 40 for our camp in the last week of August in Calgary,” said Yzerman, who is expected to choose Detroit’s Mike Babcock as his coach. “And, we’ll pick the team from there.”
Yzerman smiled when asked if there will be a spot available for Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, who was surprisingly left off Team Canada as an 18-year-old in 2006 because Gretzky preferred to go with veterans.
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NOT A CINCH, BUT IT COULD BE A CLINCH: Until the Red Wings won Game 6 there last year, Mellon Arena – the former Civic Arena – had never hosted a Stanley Cup-clinching game since the Pittsburgh Penguins entered the NHL in 1967.
Now, the Stanley Cup could be won there for the second season in a row, and by the same team. And it wouldn’t be the home team.
The last time a team won the Stanley Cup in consecutive seasons in the same opponent’s building was during the 1977 and 1978 playoffs. Montreal won Game 6 in Boston in 1978, a year after finishing off a finals sweep by winning Game 4 in Boston.
The Penguins, who didn’t win either of the franchise’s two Stanley Cups at home in 1991 and 1992, want to avoid a clincher on Tuesday and get the series back to Detroit for Game 7 on Friday. The Penguins are 8-2 at home in the playoffs.
e. … We’re going to use our crowd,” coach Dan Bylsma said. “They’re going to come out in full force, and they’re going to spur us on and our team will be focused. Hopefully we can take advantage of the small advantages that home does bring for you.”
The Red Wings might also get a lift from a revved-up crowd, Dan Cleary said, even if there are only a few scattered Red Wings fans in the arena.
“We feed off the whole atmosphere of Pittsburgh and try to ride them a little bit,” the Detroit forward said. “It should be fun Tuesday.”
While the usual standing-room audience of 17,132 will be inside Mellon Arena, there won’t be the estimated 8,000-10,000 who watched Games 3 and 4 on a large TV screen outside the arena. NBC does not allow its telecasts to be shown in such a way, so the big screen will be turned off.
If the Penguins don’t win the Stanley Cup at home next season, they never will at Mellon Arena. The team moves into a new arena for the 2010-11 season.
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ZEROED IN: The Penguins’ 5-0 loss in Game 5 was their worst in the postseason since New Jersey beat them by the same score during Game 5 of the 2001 Eastern Conference finals. The last previous five-goal margin of victory in a Stanley Cup finals game was in 2006, eventual champion Carolina’s 5-0 decision over Edmonton in Game 2.
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e first five games of the finals. That year, New Jersey beat Anaheim 4-3 as the home team won every game. Both of the current coaches were involved in that series; Mike Babcock was Anaheim’s coach, and Bylsma was one of his players. … Seven different players have scored Detroit’s seven game-winning goals during the last two finals. … Detroit is 11-1 at home, one off the record for playoff home victories in a season. New Jersey was 12-1 in 2003.
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AP Sports Writer Larry Lage in Detroit contributed to this report.
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