Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winning streak.
After the Penguins 3rd straight victory yesterday, the Penguins are now (finally) back in playoff position in the Eastern Conference, after leapfrogging the Carolina Hurricanes and Buffalo Sabres to move into 8th place, 1 point behind the 7th place New York Rangers and 2 points behind the 6th place Florida Panthers.
The Pens' are also only 5 points behind the 5th place Montreal Canadiens and 6 points behind the 4th place Philadelphia Flyers.
Pittsburgh, now on an 8-3-1 run in their last 12 games, won it's 2nd straight game on its current five game roadtrip by just manhandling the Dallas Stars in almost every phase yesterday.
Evgeni Malkin led the way for the Penguins with one goal and two assists and, much like the game against the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday night, the Penguins got rolling early thanks to a goal by Jordan Staal. This time, he finished off a 2-on-1 when he buried a rebound of a Malkin shot that went off Stars' netminder Tobias Stephan, who was making his first start since December.
Kris Letang then stoked the Penguins to a 2-0 lead later in the first period when he took a pass from Malkin down the right wing and was moving so fast, he was able to cut around the Stars' defenseman right in front of the goal where he made a nice move to the backhand and roofed the puck to give the Pens' a 2 goal advantage.
Unlike the game against Chicago -- where the Penguins also had a two goal lead but gave it up -- the Penguins poured it on in the second period.
Miroslav Satan scored his second goal in two games by taking advantage of a Stars' turnover deep in their own zone, picking off a flubbed D-to-D cross-ice pass and walking in alone on Stephan before deking him and tossing the puck behind him into an empty cage.
Malkin got the final goal for the Penguins, also in the 2nd, after he took a fortunate bounce of one of the glass partitions behind the Stars' net and whipped a puck past Stephan on the far side.
At that point, the Penguins had 4 goals on 13 shots.
Pittsburgh cruised through the final frame, when the only scoring was Loui Errikson scoring his team leading 29th goal for Dallas after the Penguins got caught chasing a little bit in their own zone and left Errikson alone in front.
Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 22 of 23 shots for his 100th NHL win.
To think that Martin Brodeur, who recently returned after missing 50 games due to elbow surgery, recorded on the same day his 100th (and 2nd straight in his 2nd game back) NHL SHUTOUT. Brodeur, by the way, is 5 wins away from breaking Patrick Roy's all time NHL record.
But back to the Penguins.
The Penguins are showing a lot more confidence out there on the ice. There's no doubt that Dallas has been struggling. The Penguins dealt them their 5th straight loss yesterday -- the first time that has happened in over 5 seasons -- and they have a host of injuries to key players like Sergei Zubov, Brendan Morrow, and Mike Richards, among others, but that shouldn't take away from the complete game the Penguins put out. They are starting to find their rhythm. As long as Fleury can continue to hold the fort, the Penguins might be able to keep up their good run and position themselves in the middle of the playoff pack.
The Penguins continue their road trip on Tuesday night in Tampa Bay against the Lightning (7:30 PM Versus).
Between now and then, there's going to be a lot of focus on Wednesday's trade deadline. The Penguins are said to be in talks with several teams. According to sources, they continue to be looking for another scoring forward, as well as grit up front and on defense.
Only time will tell what Penguins' GM Ray Shero does, but he has long been known to be interested in Ottawa Senators' RW Chris Neil. More recently, there seems to be some sentiment out there that the Penguins also have interest in Colorado Avalanche forward Ian Laperriere.
On the scoring end, they may still be kicking the can with Martin St. Louis of the Lightning (although I think that's less likely now than it was a month ago). They also may be looking at RW Alexei Ponikarovsky in Toronto and maybe even winger Alexander Frolov in Los Angeles.
Shero is said to be fielding calls primarily for Hal Gill, Ruslan Fedotenko and Jordan Staal. Staal is his biggest chip, without question, and whether Shero pulls the trigger on a deal which would move his first ever Penguins' draft choice is the biggest unknown going into Wednesday.
Of course, I'll be monitoring everything closely over the next few days and will do my best to post as soon as I know anything. The only time I don't expect to be able to do that is when I'm on an airplane until about noon EST on trade deadline day.
Let's Go Pens.
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