Penguins Look To Sweep Into The Stanley Cup Finals Tonight

Just a short post today, as the Pittsburgh Penguins look to finish off the Carolina Hurricanes in game 4 of their Eastern Conference Final -- a series that the Penguins have thusfar controlled on the strength of their speed, skill and transition game, and the superstar play of their two leaders, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.

After 3 games of this series, those 2 have combined for 14 points. Malkin has 9 points in this series alone, and is the first player in 15 years to put together six straight multiple-point efforts.

Slowing them down right now is about as impossible as ignoring the fact that only 2 of 155 teams have ever overcome in a playoff series the 3-0 deficit the Hurricanes are currently facing.

How do you possibly deal with that elephant in the room?

The fact is, there's no real way to cope with it, other than to keep it from getting there in the first place, and Carolina has done a horribly ineffective job with that task.

I read an interesting piece in the Raleigh News Observer this morning about how the Penguins have put the Hurricanes in that position in this series. You can find it here:

http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/hurricanes/story/1542307.html

A lot of that article is on point, but I'm not sure Carolina is going to get very far trying to play more physical on Crosby or Malkin, as Tim Gleason or some other Carolina defensive pylon suggested they should.

For an idea about how that's likely to turn out, I reminisce fondly about a line from my favorite hockey movie of all time.

Youngblood.

As any hockey fan who has seen that movie probably remembers, when the veterans of the Hamilton Mustang Canadian Hockey League team are taking in from the stands a tryout for the club to add a player for the playoffs and watching a young, fast and skilled Rob Lowe make all the other tryout candidates look like they don't even belong on the ice, one of the players says to to Patrick Swayze, another player on the team, "Come on, somebody hit the hot dog. Why doesn't somebody hit him?"

Then, Swayze's line says it all:

"They can't catch him"

That's basically what we've seen in this series.

And now, headed into game 4, it's not a matter of "if", it's just a matter of "when". To wit:

http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/tudor/story/1542310.html

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/playoffs/2009/news?columnist=burnside_scott&id=4205334

Of course, whether that "when" happens tonight depends in large part on the main things which have gotten this series so far -- the play of #'s 87 and 71 for Pittsburgh, and the play of goaltender Cam Ward and center Eric Staal for Carolina.

While a lot of other things have contributed to the first 3 games, those are the main factors.

If Ward and Staal come up big for the Hurricanes while Crosby and Malkin have an off night, Carolina might stretch this series at least one more game.

But face it. The writing is on the wall in this one.

You just can't get rid of that Elephant.

Recap tomorrow.