9 Down

Caputi is still the greatest last name ever

On Friday, the Pens first cut day as the Pens cut the roster down to 42, eliminating 9 players. Those players were Luca Caputi, Joe Haddad, Dustin Jeffrey, Nick Johnson and Mark Letestu, and Jonathan D’Versa were sent to the AHL. Alex Grant (St. John’s) and forwards Keven Veilleux (Rimouski) and Casey Pierro-Zabotel (Vancouver) were returned to their junior teams.

Yeah, there’s a reason why I bolded Caputi. I never expected Caputi to start with the Pens on opening night. He needed more time in the AHL and that was obvious. However, I never expected him to be cut this early in the game. I thought he’d play a preseason game or two before getting cut and sent down. I’ve been hearing many, many positive reports about him that I’m actually pretty disappointed that he was cut. I honestly feel like this is unfair to Caputi to not to show what he’s made of in a couple preseason games. But hey, I’m just a fan, not the coach, what do I know?

It’s a shame Veilleux got cut. He was expected to do big things. Now I’ve been reading around that he’s looking terrible and needs to go back down to juniors. He went to one of the Pens top prospect studs to one of the top prospect duds like that.

LETS GO PENS!

Pez Is Fine With Going to AHL

Where's the GOLD HELMET?!

 I was excited. You were excited. Every single Pens fan was excited about the appearance of Janne Pesonen. The thrilling yet hilarious video of Pez got fans, like me PUMPED about him. He completely dominated the Finnish League and looked ‘ready’ for the big show. Some Pens fans even pegged Pez on the first line with Crosby for OPENING NIGHT.

However, Pez realizes that he probably won’t be starting with the Pens opening night. It’s unfortunate as i would love to see Pez wear a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey on opening night instead of a Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins jersey. Surprisingly (and thankfully) though, Pez is okay with that…

“Whatever it takes,” said Pesonen, who need not clear waivers to play in the AHL. “I want to win games and be at a top level. If it’s not open in the beginning of the season, maybe it’s open a little bit later.”

VERY refreshing to hear that from Pez. It’s good for not only the Pens but for Pez. As noted before, he realizes how good this Pens team is and it won’t be a while until he’s officially on the starting lineup. In a way, Pez would REALLY have to shine out a few players to make the opening night roster. He’s a natural scorer and the only way he can really show his scoring skill off is on the first or second line. Unfortunately for him, our top 6 has too many experienced and better players.

However, from camp reports, Pez is actually performing pretty good. A video I watched earlier today of him at practice, he back-checked really well and got the puck back. He’s looked very fast and on top of things. These are all encouraging things to hear and see because if a player gets injured, which will happen, Pez will have a good chance of being brought up. Sometimes you can’t let that talent and skill sit down in the minors forever.

As I think about it more, once Pesonen gets his feet wet and understands the North American game, I feel he can be more productive than Dupuis. Now I like Dupuis, he was a good complimentary player for Crosby and Hossa last year and will continue to be one with Satan and Crosby. However, the first line is all about producing and unfortunately for Dupuis, he doesn’t do enough of it. Like I said earlier, Pez is a natural scorer and he should be on the same line with top players.  Just the thought of Crosby having not only one but TWO natural scorers makes me giddy.

Satan-Crosby-Pesonen could be sick!

It’s always nice to hear that Pez isn’t letting his ego get the best of him. He’s learning a new game in a new world and isn’t acting like he’s better than anyone else because he ripped up in the Finnish League. Seems like he has a good head on his shoulders.

Methinks Pez will play and make an impact during the second half of the season which leads to Pez being on the starting lineup on opening day on 09/10.

LETS GO PENS!

Christensen To Center Thrashers First Line

He was good at shootouts?

Laff.

You know you’re re-building when Erik freakin’ Christensen is centering your first line. Honestly, EC with Iyla Kovalchuk?

EC wasn’t and still isn’t exactly a ‘bad’ player. He just wasn’t good…at all. Okay he WAS good in shootouts.

I can’t see how this will be good for both EC and the Thrashers

Laff.

LETS GO PENS!

Satan: ‘Simmer down folks, simmer down’

I'd like to see a lot of that with a skating penguin on the shirt

When the Penguins first acquired, I had the same thought as everyone else did…”Satan in a Pens jersey?! WHAT?!” But like the rest of you, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of having the devil on God’s wing (yeah…that’s Sidney Crosby folks…probably already knew that though). He’s a true sniper on a playmaker’s wing. For the first time in his career, Crosby will actually start the year with a true and decent sniper instead of the worst excuses for ‘wings’ as players.

So of course Pens fans get all giddy  at the thought of Sid actually having a sniper on his wing for the whole year. Then of course the expectations have been high for Satan with the visions of him producing possibly scoring 35+ goals (eh, even I expect him to score over 30 but under 35).

But in a recent SI article, Satan is uncertain about meeting our expectations..

“Hopefully, I can meet everyone’s expectations,” Satan said.

Yeah, hopefully he can as well (both for the Pens and my fantasy team). Methinks he starts out slow and of course, Pens fans will make ridiculous threads on LGP stating “WE SHOULD TRADEZ SATAN! HE SUCKZ” Then I think he gradually starts to pick it up and goes on a complete and total rampage to end the season with over 30 goals.

From camp reports on Faceoff-Factor and the Penguins official site, Satan has looked like the REAL DEAL. People are already raving about his chemistry with Crosby. Even though I expect a slow start from Satan, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least bit if him and Crosby ‘hit it off’. They both seem so natural and so…perfect for each other to be successful right away (not trying to make this like a ‘relationship’ thing…sounds a little awkward, I know).

Oh and Crosby has no problem with the devil being on the same line as him…

“He’s a shooter, he’s a goal scorer, that’s no secret,” Crosby said of Satan. “He knows where to go, so my job doesn’t change. I’m usually the one passing, so that’s fine.”

I think you’ll be seeing a lot of 87 to 81 connections this season.

Of course Satan could be a total dud like Recchi was but hey, this is a Penguins blog…Penguins bias 24/7.

LETS GO PENS!

It’s That Time of the Year Again

TRAINING CAMP STARTS TODAY!!! WOOO!!!!! LESS THAN ONE MONTH TILL HOCKEY SEASON!!!

One word: AWESOME!

For those not in the know (though you probably already do know), that ball of an arena is where the Sens and Pens (I can rhyme) will meet up for their two game series in Stockholm, Sweden. Going to be a MAGNIFIENCT site and I hope the Swedish fans are just as pumped as we are.

Might as well make a post about this season then eh?

Top 5 things I’m most looking forward to this hockey season…

1. Jordan Staal – Anxious to see if he can come back from his sophomore slump just a year ago. Something tells me he does.

2. Marc-Andre Fleury – Will he be the same elite goalie we saw in the playoffs? Or will he return to his old form? I’m excited to find out.

3. Janne Pesonen – C’mon, who ISN’T excited to see this guy?

4. The new guys – Should be interesting to see if Satan and Feds can return to their old form with Crosby and Malkin because if they do…watch out.

5. Minor League players – Looking forward to watch Goligoski, Stone, Filewich improve and possibly an appearance or two by Luca Caputi.

With that said…

LETS GO PENS!

Just Keep Re-Stocking ‘Em Baby…

Caputi = Greatest last name EVER!

So as we all know the Penguins ‘core’ is consisted of top first round draft picks who are Crosby, Malkin, Fleury and Staal. With the recent success, not many Pens fans have taken a look down at the Pens minor league system in WBS.

That brings in Rob Rossi of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review who recently wrote a pretty good article actually prasising the Pens drafting and development. In the article, Rossi made a good point that the Pens don’t need their minor league players to become major impact/star type players. They don’t have to depend on them to make any major replacements. Now of course in the future players like Alex Goligoski might have to actually become effective and make the team when Gonchar retires/leaves. 

However, all the Pens need to depend on players like Goligoski, Ryan Stone, Jonathan Filewich and Luca Caputi (even maybe Janne Pesonen as well) is for them to be useful role players. Possibly playing in the 3rd or 4th line when other players depature or get injured. Add the fact that only one or two of the Pens top prospects might be more than role players in the near future is another reason to believe that they’ll just be role players.

Right now, the Pens are in a great situation. They have so much top-end talent and skill they can depend on to win them games. They don’t have one or two ’saviors’ on their team to step up, they have three or four.

Which brings me to my next point. Is it possible that the Pens are possibly creating a system like the Devils and the Red Wings have?

“They’re in a position every NHL franchise wants to be in, but few have the luxury of being in,” Oke said. “The rapid development of their best prospects has allowed them to start building a ‘Penguins System,’ and that’s the true measure of success for any franchise.

“Only a few franchises — New Jersey and Detroit — have done it. Pittsburgh is going in that direction.”

I never really thought of that ’till now because it takes A LOT of years to build up a system that New Jersey and Detroit has. You need exceptional management and that starts at the top with the GM. Both the Devils and Red Wings have great GM’s in Lou Lamoriello as the Devils GM and Ken Holland as the Red Wings GM. Do I think Ray Shero can be as good as both Lamoriello and Holland? I don’t know, I doubt that. However, I do believe that Shero can and has become a very good GM with most of his deals working out in the Pens favor.

It’d be awesome for the Pens to turn into what the Devils and Red Wings have and have a “Penguins System” but I’m skeptical now.

In other news…

PENGUINS OPEN UP TRAINING CAMP TOMORROW!

I’m pretty damn pumped.

That is all.

LETS GO PENS!

How Awesome Is It?

OOHH YEEAHHH

It’s pretty damn awesome. So on Thursday I finally got NHL 09 (damn you Best Buy for not having it in ’till Thursday and not Tuesday) and after two days of playing it non-stop (with an occasional break for the PSU/Syracuse game) and I’d have to say this is the best hockey game EVER!

“Why such a bold statement?” is what you’re probably thinking. Well at first when this game was being hyped up to better than NHL 08, I was skeptical. NHL 08 was and still is a blast to play so I thought reviewers were overrating this game.

Boy was I wrong.

This game is possibly the greatest sports game ever which says something considering all of my 360 games are sports games and that’s all I play. The realness of it is amazing, all of the player’s faces look EXACTLY like they do in real life and in a way, the graphics are slightly better (which is something I didn’t expect). The gameplay is very, very good as well. I like that one-timers are harder and that the puck flutters more. It gives its realness that I talked about earlier.

Be-A-Pro mode is awesome as well. I didn’t like that you aren’t drafted by a team though. It should be like you’re a REAL player and your career process should be REAL. Which means you should be drafted randomly by a team. Oh well, that’s only a small part I don’t like.

I decided to pick Chicago since they’re my second favorite team and chose my player type to be  a ’sniper’. I love that when they open each game up you’re actually coming through and going onto the ice with the focusing on you. Thought that was neat. Sort of don’t like that YOU can do line changes. The coaches should decide when you go out on the ice. Instead all of you have to do tap ‘B’ and you’re out there within 10 seconds.

Thought the ‘card’ concept where you get your own hockey card was pretty saweeet. I don’t know why but I like those kind of things.

Yeah, the game is pretty epic and anyone with a soul should buy it.

Stan's the man

GOOD NEWS! Stan Savran broke the news on FSN Pittsburgh last week that the two-game series between the Senators/Penguins in Stockholm, Sweden will indeed be on FSN Pittsburgh. So incredibly happy about that as I was worried that they were going to show it on CBC and CBC only.

LETS GO PENS!

Is Optimism Finally In The Air?

Do you REALLY think he'll let his team struggle?

Yeah, it gets real old after a while. We keep hearing time and time and time again that the Penguins will be taking a big step back like the Senators took last season and so many before them took. We hear this…”HOSSAZ IS GONE THAT MEANS YOU SUCKZZ!!” Well we didn’t suck before him and we won’t suck after him. Yeah, we’re not big fans of suckers which is why we’re Pens fans and not Flyers fans.

Thankfully though the Penguins official website has posted an article that gives us Pens fans the good stuff about our team and not the crap that gets shoved down our throats from the haters. Now of course the Pens official site will post a positive article instead of a negative article because their next negative one they do post will be the first.

However, it does bring up a good point and that is the ‘expierence factor’. In any playoffs in any sport, expierence is essential espically in hockey. Crosby, Malkin, Fleury, and Staal (the core) are all one year better and have something that’s going be extremely important - Stanley Cup expierence.

They know how to get there, they know how to do it. So instead of facing the impossible task of ‘getting there’, it’s more of a ‘ehh been there, done that’. It’ll obviously still be very hard to get back there since the East is getting stronger with the younger teams that are starting to emerge as ‘elite teams’. But what the Pens can say and what the Pens have that the Canadiens, Capitals, Flyers, etc. don’t is the valueable expierence. I’d even have to say the expierence of being smacked by the Wings should help as well. They pretty much know they have to step up their game A LOT in the Stanley Cup Finals and play much better.

Another big reason why many are suggesting the Pens will struggle this year is that the losers of the previous Stanley Cup have a history of taking a big step backwards the next year. But the difference between this year’s Pens team and the past Stanley Cup runners-up is that Stanley Cup runner-ups keep the same roster while the Pens are a completely different team with new additions.

Now that could be a positive or a negative. I’m in a good mood tonight so we’ll start off with the positives.

Good: New players could change the complexity of the team and bring in a new mood that wasn’t there last season. The rest of the team forgets about the players that left and knows they need to form a bond with the new guys. Also, new players are more hungrier to fight out for positions and impress not only the coaches but the entire team. Which then makes the rest of the team up their level of play and make them better. Hungry team = Yikes (espically this one).

Bad: Chemistry is huge in hockey and none of the new guys will have it with the rest of the team. It can screw up timing and potential scoring chances in big games. The team last year was so used to playing and being on each other lines and now it’s a completely new system to work with. Therrian will probably switch lines up every night because of the newbies which will probably cause frustration among the team which will then turn out to be a bigger problem than what it should be. Not this Therrien, please, not this year.

However, in this case, I think I’ll bank on the hope that Satan and Feds will thrive on playing with two of the best player’s in the world. Crosby can make ANYONE look good and Malkin’s getting to the point where he can too. Add that Satan and Feds aren’t as far beyond on their primes as everyone thinks they are and I see the additions becoming plusses for us.

Speaking of ‘87′, I loved this quote from the article…

“I don’t think you can really worry about it,” Penguins captain Sidney Crosby told NHL.com. “You have to look at things short-term. When you go that far, you start the next season thinking we have to get back there. That’s where everyone wants to be. But the process of the season doesn’t change because you were there the year before. You have to have a good start. There are different points of the season, whether it be longer road trips or a stretch of divisional games, there are certain points that are big. You have to realize and recognize what they are, the same as you would the year before. If anything, you have to use the experience you’ve gained to your advantage.”

I love it. Absolutely have fallen in love this quote.

First off, it shows that Crosby’s maturing. He realizes that every part of the season is important and you have to worry about what’s happening now instead of the future. The ’expierence factor’ taught him that. Second off, does anyone really think Crosby will let this team struggle? I mean honestly, the kid (no pun intended) is so driven and so hungry that I doubt he’ll let HIS team slip into mediocrocity. After last season’s dissapointment, I bet he’s foaming at the mouth to get back to the SCF.

I’m not predicting the Pens to go back to the SCF. In fact, I got the Pens being upset in the second round. However, this whole crap about them possibly not making the playoffs and finishing in 7th or 8th place and barely making it in is bogus. When you have Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury, all still maturing and growing, you’re not going to barely make the playoffs.

Can’t wait till the season starts and have us prove the haters wrong…again.

LETS GO PENS!

Marian Who?

Bandwagon jumper

Marian Hossa finally has given his reason on to why he left the Pens…

”Obviously, Pittsburgh is going to have a great team still but like I said, at the end of the day I decided to go to Detroit. I just felt there’s a little bit better chance.”

I hate to say it but he IS right. I mean other than Pittsburgh, Detroit truly is the best place to go right now if you want to win the Stanley Cup.

Oh well, I’ve been over him for a while now. You should be too.

Hossa’s a traitor and a tool.

LETS GO PENS!

Friday Night ‘Guins – Seventh Edition

Here is the seventh edition of Friday Night ‘Guins…

I love watching Mario videos. All of them make my jaw drop and all ten of these do. Just unbelievable, breath taking, jaw-dropping, insane and “oh my God, did he REALLY just do that?” type of plays. I’ll go over all ten…

# 10: I don’t know how he does it. To make two sick moves, one on the defenseman and one on the goalie and then to pass it to a wide open teammate when he was barely looking, for a goal is just…too much for words. Add that it was against the Rangers makes it even more better.

# 9: He makes it look so easy and so simple. Get the puck, make a little move, then just shoot between the goalie’s legs like it’s nothing. All I could think when I watched was ‘how the eff did he do that?!’ Simply amazing.

#8: Lemieux didn’t even see him. He wasn’t looking at his guy yet it was a PERFECT pass for a goal. The ESPN jokes make a big deal about Kobe Bryant making a no look pass like five feet away. But Lemieux made a sensational no look pass across the ice for a goal which is probably the hardest thing to do in hockey.

#7: REDICIOLOUS! Squeezing through two defenders then shooting it as he’s falling down and having that much strength to do it so is awesome. Pretty much a vintage Lemieux.

#6: One word…sick. That is all.

#5: Every highlight is a new one. This time he loses control of the puck, then flips it in the air to ’tap’ it in mid-air to score. Where else do you see that? Yeah, that’s what I thought, only Mario could do that. Oh and I think having a defender in his way probably adds some difficulty to it as well.

#4: It’s like he has ‘full control’ of the puck like basketball players do with the ball. Completely undressed the defender, then made a fool out of the other defender to easily score. How he does it, I will never know…

#3: It’s like he played footsies with Bourque with the puck. Trickling it through his feet then making another move on him to score on a wicked shot going top shelf. Most players lose the puck and it becomes a scrum. Mario doesn’t, he scores.

#2: Even though it isn’t a Penguins related play, it’s still pretty damn amazing. Nice move by poking the puck away, then going to down to score in the clutch for Canada. Awesome showing of his athlectism.

#1: Definitely agreed with this play being number one. Sometimes defenders just need to stop trying against Mario and let him score…it got pretty pathetic back then. But anyways, that’s probably one of the top 5 best goals for me that I’ve seen. Of course you got the great move on the defender then to hurry up and change directions at the last second and score is beyond unreal.

AWESOME video that I recommend any hockey fan to watch.

All hail 66.

LETS GO PENS!