Pittsburgh Penguins win Stanley Cup

In beating the San Jose Sharks in this year’s finals, the Penguins join the Los Angeles Kings and Chicago Blackhawks as multiple Stanley Cup winners in the salary-cap era – and officially signaled to the Kings and Blackhawks that it’s now a three-team race to be considered the best franchise of this era.

The win caps off a tremendous season for the Penguins and coach Mike Sullivan, who replaced Mike Johnston on December 12 after the latter posted a 15-10-3 record through 28 games this term.

The Penguins outshot the Sharks, 206-137, during the six-game slate of games, and although it was Sharks goalie Martin Jones receiving plenty of praise, Murray still came up big when they needed him the most.

The Sharks have averaged just two power play chances per game through the first five games of the Stanley Cup Final, and captain Joe Pavelski is not all of a sudden expecting to have tons of time with the man advantage in Game 6 on Sunday.

Phil Kessel, bullied out of Toronto, was Pittsburgh’s most productive postseason player and my playoff MVP.

All but one of the 11 goals the Sharks have scored in the Cup final against the Pittsburgh Penguins have been at even strength.

This video includes images from Getty Images.

More than three months before he captured the second Stanley Cup of an increasingly illustrious career, Sidney Crosby reflected on how quickly time has passed since he first hoisted the game’s greatest prize. The two outliers, the 2006 Carolina Hurricanes (48.2 percent) and the 2009 Pittsburgh Penguins (48.4 percent), were close.

“It’s just not good enough”, Couture said of the offensive effort in the final period, which included a two-minute power play in which San Jose put zero shots on net.

“It’s a special group, but only one team can win”. Unlike Game 5 when the Penguins quickly trailed, Pittsburgh gained the lead on Brian Dumoulin’s goal at 8:16 of the first period.

Last spring, he won a World Championship with Canada to become the 26th member of the Triple Gold Club for those who have won Olympic gold, a Stanley Cup and a World Championship. You need the puck to draw a penalty, and the Sharks never had the puck in the final, most important 20 minutes of their season. But a series of concussions cost Crosby nearly an entire season and a half, and there were those playoff disappointments that included twice blowing 3-1 series leads.

“I probably won’t believe this is real until at least, I don’t know, who knows, but I’m just enjoying the moment right now like I was trying to do all playoffs long”, he said. I thought he was sensational every game we played.

While the Penguins celebrate another Cup conquest this summer, questions will be asked about the team’s goaltending situation going forward. Even though they were not among the leading scorers in the playoffs, they still were able to make their presence felt as they led their team to another Stanley Cup. “He can adapt and change his game to different things”.

Only four fires were set, one involving a couch, one a mattress and two with loose newspaper, all of which were quickly extinguished, city officials said. But that doesn’t mean that just because your team didn’t win the Cup that you don’t end the season feeling good.

“What got us here was everybody stepping up”, Jones said.