Beyond Their Years
Young Penguins Head to Playoffs
By Bob Grove

It's been six years since the energy wave known as the Stanley Cup playoffs last blew over Pittsburgh, and in many ways it seems to have been much longer. Back in the spring of 2001, when the Penguins came within three victories of reaching the Finals, Johan Hedberg was the unlikely goaltender, Jaromir Jagr hadn't yet been traded and, for the team's fans, the emotional wounds from a five-overtime loss to the Flyers one year earlier still smarted.

As the New Jersey Devils were eliminating Pittsburgh that spring, 13-year-old Sidney Crosby was a promising player in Cole Harbour, N.S., still three seasons away from his first taste of junior hockey. Colby Armstrong was in Red Deer, Alta., still feeling the glow of a Memorial Cup championship but six seasons away from becoming an NHL regular. Jordan Staal wasn't yet a teenager.

So as the Penguins prepare this month to re-enter the Cup chase, their age - or more accurately, their lack thereof - will be exhibit A for those questioning whether Pittsburgh is ready to make a long post-season run. Certainly the Penguins' play this season has served to dispel any doubts about their talent and potential, but the Stanley Cup playoffs are a crucible that practically demands that its survivors understand just what they're getting themselves into.

Of the 25 players on Pittsburgh's active roster at the end of the regular season, 16 have never skated in a single Cup playoff game. That group includes eight of the Penguins' top 11 scorers and their No. 1 goaltender, and rumor has it that the latter position is important when the NHL calendar turns to spring.

But this team believes it is about more than just potential. It believes it has the often-elusive elixir of chemistry and talent, and thus the Penguins are approaching the post-season not with doubts or trepidation but with the verve of a pack of kids just given the keys to hockey's candy store.

"The core of the group is so young," says 23-year-old checking center Maxime Talbot, "but we're not satisfied. We just want to play, you know?"

And why not? This was supposed to be the season in which Pittsburgh turned the corner from perennial draft lottery team to a challenger for a playoff spot. But the Penguins blew by that signpost in the second half of the season, challenging New Jersey for first place in the Atlantic Division, making the biggest single-season points improvement in team history and becoming, quite simply, one of the best Pittsburgh teams ever.

"We weren't exactly sure what was going to happen at the beginning of the year," said 24-year-old Ryan Whitney, whose personal improvement this season mirrored that of the team as he became one of the league's best offensive defensemen. "We knew we'd be good, but we've really grown as a team, really improved the whole year, and I know that's what Coach wants and that's what Ray (GM Ray Shero) wants.

"So it's been a good year, and we've just got to keep going. I think we can make a lot of noise in the playoffs if we play the way we have been playing."

And that's where Whitney brings up chemistry.

"Well, winning has a lot do to do with it," he says, "but at the same time this is a real close team where everyone gets along real well, so it's a really fun group to be a part of."

These guys run around together even when they're not on the road, and it would be foolish for anyone to think that the way the Penguins stick up for each other on the ice comes from a sense of duty or mere job description. They want to do it.

"You can sit here and be best friends, but you could go on the ice and it doesn't show up. We've had our times when we haven't played too consistent, but for the most part everyone in here plays real hard for the guy next to them, and that's all you can ask for," says Armstrong, a big part of the off-ice glue holding this team together. "We have a lot of guys in here that care about each other, and I think that reflects on the ice.

"Sometimes in hockey you find guys that don't like each other; that's normal because you've got guys coming from all over. But I've been lucky to play on a lot of teams for the Pittsburgh organization where the guys get along, and now everyone's kind of moved up to here. As much as we're friends off the ice, it's great the way it works out on the ice, too. Everyone seems to work hard for each other."

Armstrong is part of a group of players who played for coach Michel Therrien with the Penguins' AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, a group that includes goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, defensemen Whitney, Rob Scuderi and Alain Nasreddine and forwards Talbot, Michel Ouellet and Erik Christensen.

"It feels like when I was in junior, like every guy has that family. It feels like family," says Ouellet. "I don't know if it's because everybody is young and it feels like junior or something, but they bring it here and everybody is having fun and contributing every day."

Just as their chemistry may help them overcome their lack of playoff experience, the Penguins also may benefit from the way their regular season unfolded. A whopping 40 of Pittsburgh's first 76 games were decided by a single goal, and this Penguins team went into overtime more often than any other.

That's not to suggest a narrow November victory in Los Angeles resembles a playoff game, but the volume of close games played this season by the Penguins simply has to help them deal with the pressure of playoff hockey.

"We've learned how to play in tight games," says Therrien.

Talbot agrees. "We know what it takes now to win games and we're doing it. We know where to go, we know what to do," he says. "We have full confidence in both goalies and we know every line can score goals. It's going to help us down the road. Playoffs, we know, are going to be tight games, one-goal games. But we've won a lot of them, and it's put us more alert in pressure situations at the end of games."

Adds Armstrong, "I always look at the Oilers last year, how they barely squeaked in there playing playoff hockey for the last month and a half of the season just to get in. They carried that right into the playoffs and just kept rolling to the Finals. That will definitely help. If you're playing that type of hockey for a while. . . you just can't turn it on and off like a light switch."