Never Fear, The Real Pittsburgh Penguins Are Here

There's been a lot of concern over injuries in the Pittsburgh Penguins camp over the last little while. When Malkin went down, there was a collective gasp that I'm pretty sure was so loud it started trending on Twitter.

Too many Penguins fans are concerned about us not being healthy. But really, what's been the big worry? When you look at it, there's only been three major injuries this whole season starting with Kris Letang in early December. This injury also came at the height of the whole "our season is over" panic which was already happening before he got hurt. To me, and I said this at the time, that injury was the best thing that could have happened because up to then Letang was struggling and all the other defenseman were kind of standing around waiting for him to figure everything out for them. With him gone, it was going to force them to step up and play.

Letang sat out a shootout loss to the Los Angeles Kings that I argued the next morning was easily the best game of the season by the Penguins up to then, and that there wasn't really anything wrong with the program. After that game, the team also happened to fire their coach, which was the right move. But even Sidney Crosby said there were obvious signs things were gradually starting to improve before Sullivan was hired.

While they did go 2-5-0-1 in that 8 game stretch without Letang, this mental break for him was critical to how he would play for the rest of the season. The others sorted themselves out, and a rejuvenated Letang started to play like a Norris winner.

After that, the team caught fire and went relatively unscathed all the way up to the Malkin injury. But the Penguins are just plain too deep for that to really matter. The bottom 6 are the real difference makers on a championship caliber team, and ours has cashed in in spades. I credit Mike Sullivan with some of the best roster management I've ever seen, making sure all 12 forwards are heavily involved in every game. He's done wonders with sneaking Crosby, Kessel, Hags, and Malkin some extra short shifts mixing them in on the bottom two lines here and there, and also allowing the bottom 6 to take responsibility. There's not one person now he wouldn't trust to put on for a last minute defensive zone face off, and he doesn't have to shorten the bench too much even down by a goal.

The Malkin injury, far from hurting, has only reinforced this. The pandemic that rippled through Pens Nation after Malkin got hurt was about as needless as the Y2K scare.

The power play will suffer, they said. He's the only one that shoots, they said. We won't make the playoffs now, they said.

Looking at it now, those same people are planning the Cup parade. They're wondering where Malkin even fits in the lineup when he returns, and discussing trading him in the off-season for another defenseman. These are the same people, of course, that were crying for a Kessel trade.

The last fatal blow is the current Fleury concussion. Like we at Let's Talk Pens said a little while ago, Murray was going to make Fleury better by playing well enough to take his place. He was going to push Fleury to MVP form by putting pressure on him, by making him realize his spot isn't necessarily a guarantee.

I think what he's accomplished so far this season, and particularly since Fleury went down, says some of the story. What tells the most about Murray is how well Fleury has played since the trade deadline. As soon as Rutherford announced Murray wasn't going anywhere, Marc-Andre Fleury has been lights out.

Whether they win it all or go out in the first round, one or even two injuries isn't going to lessen the chances of this year's team.