While he never played a minute in a Pens sweater, I'd like to take a moment to give a round of applause to Joe Sakic, who's announcing his retirement from hockey this week. He's one of the classiest guys in the game, and for a long, long time was one of its best centers. Pens fans may remember him best as Mario Lemieux's linemate in the 2002 Olympics and the 2004 World Championships, a playmaker-sniper combination that was so deadly it was almost unsportsmanlike. You will be missed, Joe.

Now that hockey season has ended, many Pens fans (like me) are kind of in denial; as a result we're turning our focus to the offseason and free agency. In that spirit, I wanted to bring up a possible Penguins signing most people aren't discussing right now.

Jaromir Jagr.

First of all, this technically is not a possibility at the moment. Jagr is currently signed with his KHL club through next season, and Evgeni Malkin can tell you (off the record) how casual the Russian league is about the sanctity of contract. Nonetheless, last winter and spring, rumors were swirling that the KHL was in danger of going under due to the falling price of oil. And Jagr was on record saying that he'd like to return to the NHL. (Although the latter rumors were in the context of his going to play in Edmonton. As Pens fans know all too well, sometimes the championship thirst of a star player can only be quenched elsewhere.) But, for the sake of argument, let's say the KHL goes bankrupt and Jagr becomes a free agent by default: should Pittsburgh try to sign him? The answer to this question seems to raise three sets of issues:

1. How Many Shots are Left in that Bottle of Jagr? While many of us are old enough to remember Jagr as a boyish 17-year-old with lightning moves and a spectacular hockey mullet, 1990 was actually a long time ago, and the guy is now 36. And he was never exactly an Iron Man as far as injuries went. Nevertheless, just 13 months ago he was outstanding in a losing effort in the playoffs against Pittsburgh, and he netted 54 goals as recently as 2005-2006. And by all accounts his play in Russia this year has been superlative. So, it's probably safe to say he's got good years left. Now, "add a dynamic scoring winger" is pretty high on Pittsburgh's to-do list this summer, and Jagr is still one of the better ones in the business. Is anyone else intrigued by the idea of Jagr skating on a wing with Malkin and Fedotenko? I thought so.

2. A Flock of C-Notes Like Bugsy Seigel. So, how much would this cost? On one hand, Jagr has often been accused of only caring about the money. And honestly, with his gambling debts (sorry, ALLEGED gambling debts), who could blame him? But maybe a season of being paid in an appreciating currency on a tax-free basis has allowed him to pay some of that off. But seriously, one would hope that Jags (and his agent) realize that a player of his age and, ahem, reputation isn't getting a long-term deal or Ovechkin money from anybody. If the Pens pursued him, it would clearly be as a complementary player and as a short-term deal. He would clearly get more than the league minimum (the guy is a sure-fire Hall of Famer, after all), but it's possible he could be had for a reasonable salary and one or two seasons.

3. We May Be Through With the Past, but the Past Isn't Through With Us. And now we turn to the elephant in the room: how would Penguins fans receive Jagr in 2009-2010? No Pittsburgh athlete I can think of has been so beloved, only to so thoroughly wear out their welcome, as Jaromir Jagr. I remember the guerilla warfare Jagr waged against coaches like Kevin Constantine and Ivan Hlinka, seeing him half-assing his shifts, etc. And, if you can find one, ask a Caps fan with a long memory what they think of Jagr; if the phrase "single-handedly murdered our franchise for half a decade" doesn't come up I'll be surprised. I remember the history. But ultimately it's not what I judge Jags on. Maybe I'm just a nice guy (my ex-girlfriends would probably say there must be another explanation), but I think of the good times when I think of Jaromir Jagr. Much as Pens fans are enjoying taunting Marian Hossa right now, I'm sure that joy will fade for me, because for me Hossa was never really a Pen: he was a deadline rental who wasn't in Pittsburgh long enough to even see autumn. But Jagr was a Pen. I remember him as the greatest one-on-one player I'd ever seen until What's-His-Name took the ice for the Capitals in 2005. I remember when he was drafted, an awkward kid not much older than I was, living in Pennsylvania without a word of English, and seeing Mario, Badger Bob, and Scotty Bowman quickly turn him from an entertaining defensive liability into one of hockey's most dangerous players. I think of the two Stanley Cup banners hanging right now in Mellon, and how we wouldn't have won either without him. I think of the nearly 450 goals he scored wearing our sweater, and I really hope his number 68 is hanging from the new building's roof not long after he retires. Ultimately, for all of our sarcasm, I think Pittsburghers are warm people who will give someone another chance if it's asked for, and I'm ready to give Jaromir Jagr a second chance. As far as his "character issues", things have only gone sour with Jagr when he's been expected to be the face of a franchise: when he played second fiddle to Lemieux in Pittsburgh, and when he ceded the leadership role to Brendan Shanahan in New York, he was a good citizen; as a complementary piece on a team with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, I think he'd be fine. And I would love the storyline. I would love to see Jagr return to the NHL, and to the city where it all began for him; I would love to see him banging in timely goals, and trying to wrap up his career helping one more team win a Stanley Cup. And I would love to see him lift that thing one more time, and redeem himself with the Pittsburgh fans. If nothing else, all the Jagr-haters in the hockey media (Milbury, Melrose, etc.) would have something else to shove into their collective craw, which I would love.

Thoughts?

So, today SI.com has a report of Henrik Zetterberg echoing Kris Draper's comment that Sidney Crosby "snubbed" and "disrespected" the Detroit Red Wings by not shaking everyone's hand at the end of game 7. Just in case the Wings are interested, here are my thoughts on the subject:

Red Wings, you're a great team, and you had a whale of a playoff run this season. The Finals was a tough series, it was a close series, it was an emotional series. It all came down to one game, and you came up short in that game: the Penguins played the game of their lives, and they beat you straight-up. If you wanted to take the high road, and demonstrate once again that you're a gracious, classy group, the thing to do would have been to let the Pens enjoy their moment. They worked their tails off, overcame adversity all season long, clawed their way into the playoffs, and earned everything they got, including their victory Friday night. When the final horn sounded, Sid was immediately mobbed by teammates and team staff, and the handshake line was just one of the things he had to do (along with answering questions from about 70 reporters, wondering how many ligaments in his knee might be ruptured, and, you know, skating with the Stanley Cup). If he didn't personally hurry after every member of the Wings to shake their hands, that's just something that happens. This wasn't LeBron James after the Cavaliers lost to Orlando; Sid wasn't in any hurry to get off the ice. It just happens.

But, for whatever reason, some of you (well, Kris and Hank) chose not to take the high road. You decided to try to make the Penguins' moment about you instead. In a season filled with ironies, you provided perhaps the most amusing irony of all: you whined and complained that Sidney Crosby was mean to you. Where I used to live, in California, we have an expression to describe people who make every situation about themselves, and complain about how others are offending their delicate sensibilities: the expression is "drama queen". And Kris and Hank, that's the way you're acting. I would have assumed you were better than this. But apparently I would have been wrong.

Now that game 7 and the 2008-2009 NHL season is in the books, the following thanks are in order:

1. Thanks to Mario Lemieux. Thank you for keeping our team in Pittsburgh, and for not being afraid to spend your money on good players. The Pirates could learn something from you.

2. Thanks to Ray Shero for the brilliant job you've done in assembling a gifted, well-rounded team.

3. Thanks to Dan Bylsma. You figured out, instantly really, how to get the best effort and the most consistent play imaginable out of this group of players. Considering how inconsistent they were during the winter, that was amazing. I was critical of the team when they fired Michel Therrien and brought you in, and obviously I was wrong. Glad to be so.

4. Thanks to Michel Therrien. You couldn't get us to this place last season, but I look at your tenure as coach as a critical intermediate step to this championship. You demanded discipline, tenacity, and defense from your teams, which was a desperately needed change of culture for the Penguins.

5. Thanks to all the doubters in the mainstream hockey media. This means you, Pierre McGuire, Mike Milbury, Barry Melrose, and so on. Thanks for never giving the Penguins credit for playing well, and thanks for insisting that Detroit's victory in the series was inevitable. The Pens might have been more anxious in those big games had you not taken all the pressure off them like that.

6. Thanks to Marc-Andre Fleury. My personal Conn Smythe pick. So, just to review, you're an inconsistent goalie who lets in soft goals all the time, who can't control his rebounds, and who can't play well in Joe Louis. Who's laughing now? Thank you for being great every time we needed you to be: games 6 and 7 of this series, game 1 against Carolina, and games 2 and 4 against Philadelphia, just to offer a few examples. You should feel very, very vindicated this morning. As do I, since I've insisted since 2005 that you were capable of being a top-tier NHL goalie.

7. Thanks to Evgeni Malkin. MVP! MVP! MVP! You don't get the press of Crosby or Ovechkin, but you were everything your team needed in this postseason. Whether it was piling up a ludicrous 36 playoff points, or blocking shots and playing first-rate defense in close games, or being a nightmare to defend on the forecheck, or doing things like single-handedly breaking the spirit of the Carolina Hurricanes with the 5 goals you scored in games 2 and 3, you more than earned that trophy.

8. Thanks to Max Talbot. Thank you for turning into Alex Ovechkin in the second period last night. And thank you for challenging Carcillo to that fight in game 6 of the Philly series, completely changing the momentum of that game.

9. Thanks to Sid Crosby. It was tough luck that injury kept you from taking your last shifts in game 7, but seeing you lift that Cup last night was a sweet moment for this Pens fan. Few athletes take more crap from other players or from the fans than you, and few athletes have played under as much pressure as you, yet you've always handled it with grace and with class. You always work your tail off, and you're always ready to play. You are truly a great captain; that's another thing I'm happy to admit I was once wrong about. And, you know, thank you for being a monster in the Washington and Carolina series.

10. Thanks to Marian Hossa. "Hohhhhh-saaaah! Hohhhhh-saaaah!" Thank you for not signing with us, and for the verbal slap in the face you gave the Penguins when it was announced. Way to give your Finals opponent that much more motivation. Winning championships at the highest level, whether Stanley Cups, Super Bowls, or World Series, is about the team and the team's success. It's not only about you. You made it clear that you weren't in this season for a team; you were in it for yourself. For that reason most of all, I'm glad you didn't sign with us.

11. Thanks to the 2008-2009 Pittsburgh Penguins. From Sid Crosby on down to Philippe Boucher, you guys just played, and won, the biggest game in Penguins history. You played a controlled, focused, disciplined game; the perfect game for the situation. And you beat the Detroit Red Wings, a legitimately great team, on the road. It was a long season with a lot of highs and lows, but I will never forget this game. Thank you boys.

With the Penguins heading into Game 7 this Friday, with a chance to win the third Stanley Cup in franchise history, this Pens fan is thinking back over all the things that have happened since the last Cup win. Things like:

1. The 1992-1993 season, when our star player was diagnosed with cancer, missed a third of a season, and still won the scoring title. And when our President's Trophy-winning team choked in the second round against the Islanders.

2. A lot of seasons in which we scored a ton of goals, played no defense, and did nothing in the playoffs.

3. The league continued its proud tradition of due diligence in allowing a crook named Howard Baldwin to buy the team. He ran it like a Ponzi scheme, and ran it into the ground. Which led to the second-best player in franchise history being traded to the Capitals in a salary dump.

4. The league also continued its proud tradition of building strong relationships with passionate, profitable hockey markets, by threatening for the better part of a decade to relocate the Penguins unless the city built a new arena with taxpayer dollars. Let's not forget that the city was in receivership at the time (i.e., not exactly flush with tax revenue). So, to review, the NHL was trying to shake down a bankrupt city for tax dollars, and telling that city that its unwillingness to do so meant that Pittsburgh just didn't care about hockey in a way that, say, Kansas City would. In colloquial terms, this is called kicking someone who isn't your enemy in the teeth while they're down.

5. Then there was last season's playoff run. And this season's adversity, followed by this season's playoff run.

6. Then came this series with Detroit, which has become known for two things: (1) two highly skilled, evenly matched teams; and (2) the Red Wings getting very favorable officiating each time they've needed a win at home. The latter didn't matter in game 5, but it arguably made a huge difference in game 2.

So, after almost 20 seasons of frustrations and disappointments, all I ask from the NHL is this: a fairly called game 7. You can let everything go on both sides if you want, but I'm changing the channel when the Wings get their 25th power play chance.

For entertainment and discussion:

1. What a difference a year makes. In last year's Finals, while the Penguins competed hard and gave us a game 5 for the ages, the Red Wings were clearly the stronger team, taking a stranglehold in games 1 and 2 that they never really relinquished. This time around, the gap between the teams has narrowed considerably. Even when falling behind 0-2 in the series, the Pens played solid (if imperfect) games both times, which could not be said last year. And their execution on home ice has been a thing to behold. Raise your hand if you suggested at the beginning of the postseason that this year's team was arguably better than last year's (raises hand).

2. Mea culpa. Sometimes you're happy to admit that you were wrong about something, and sometimes you aren't. If the Pens manage to finish this thing off and bring the Stanley Cup back to Pittsburgh, I will be very, very, very happy to admit that I was very wrong about Dan Bylsma.

3. What's up with the Red Wings? While the Penguins need to be commended for their play in all four games of this series, it's reasonable to wonder at how the supposedly unbeatable Red Machine has let Pittsburgh take control of this series. To what extent do injury and fatigue have to enter into the discussion? The Wings went through a bruising, brutal 7-game series with Anaheim and a physical series against Chicago, and they're absorbing a fair number of bumps from the Pens as well. And at this point Pavel Datsyuk has just passed Peter Forsberg on the all-time list for "number of news items written about an injured foot". A lot of things likely explain why the Pens were able to even the series at home, but it's fair to wonder: are the Wings running out of gas?

4. True or False: Evgeni Malkin will go down as one of the top 6 or 7 players in NHL history.  

5. True or False: When Malkin and Fleury are at the tops of their games, the Penguins are almost impossible to beat.

6. D-FENS. I'm sure, any day now, the hockey press will realize that the Penguins know how to play defense. They shut down the versatile and gifted Philadelphia forwards in round 1 and Eric Staal and Ray Whitney in the ECF, and have largely kept the Red Wings skill players in check. The only player to have a field day against this team was Ovechkin, and let's face it, Ovechkin really is that good.

7. Mea culpa part 2. I haven't been able to take part in the game threads here in games 3 or 4 because of work, but I did want to apologize for losing my cool a bit on the game 2 thread. My job is kind of unimaginably stressful lately, and I was kind of on a short fuse that night. My bad.

8. Game 5 predictions. The pressure would seem to be squarely on the Red Wings Saturday. If you're Pittsburgh, you don't mess around this close to the finish line. So long as they don't have to kill off 18 or 19 Wings power plays, and so long as the linesmen enforce the offsides rule for BOTH teams, the Pens are playing well enough to take this next one on the road. And if they do, one thinks that not even (another) federal bailout will be enough to save Detroit.

Now that a Pittsburgh-Detroit rematch in the Stanley Cup Finals seems is certain, the early buzz appears to have the Penguins as underdogs against the Red Wings. In the interest of healthy debate, below are just a few reasons why Detroit could soon become the most depressing town in America. I mean, even more so.

1. Repeating is much more difficult than winning the first title. The greatest athletes and teams can only stay at the top for so long. Partly it's the pressure; partly it's that you can only go so long with a bullseye on your back. Just ask Roger Federer or the 2007 New England Patriots.

2. The secret continues to be well-kept, but it isn't the mid-1990s anymore. Grunge is dead, no one watches "Saturday Night Live", and the Penguins are no longer a flashy team that plays no defense. They get no credit for this, but it's true.

3. Lidstrom, Datsyuk, and all the other walking wounded. The frequency and vagueness of the injury reports surrounding these Red Wings can only be described as Kevin-Garnett-like lately. While Detroit fans have been fairly blase about this, in spite of the fact that no one misses playoff games unless they're legitimately hurt, ever, the absence or ineffectiveness of Lidstrom would create a serious matchup problem for the Wings. The key to defending the Penguins is having enough strong defensive pairs to put out against the Crosby and Malkin lines; the lack of this was what doomed the Hurricanes.

4. Wings fans might have been too busy setting fire to buildings in their neighborhood or voting for Kwame Kilpatrick (or, in the case of bandwagon Wings fans, too busy cheering for the Yankees, Patriots, Cavaliers, Florida Gators football team, and UNC basketball team) to notice, but your team can be beaten. We saw it in 2004 with the Flames, we saw it in 2006 with the Oilers, we saw it in 2007 with the Ducks, and we almost saw it in 2009, when the Wings needed a fluky, should-have-been-waved-off goal in the dying seconds to win game 7 at home against a #8 seed playing a rookie goaltender. The key to beating the Red Wings is fairly simple: play Anaheim hockey. The mistake the Pens made in last year's Finals, and which the Blackhawks are making this year, lies in trying to match the Wings at the soft, Euro, finesse game. No one does soft and Euro like the Red Wings, and when you try to match their skill you play into their hands. The way to beat them is to play an uglier, nastier game while taking care of your own end. Detroit isn't as soft as they used to be, but they've never been comfortable playing this kind of game. If the Pens can be the meaner, more physical team (and they have the bodies to do so), history suggests they can win this series.

So there you go. Just a few reasons why Detroit fans could soon have a reason to wear bags on their heads. I mean, another reason.

With two rounds of the playoffs complete, my ability to pick the series winners continues to be uncanny. As of now I've picked 11 out of 12, including the upsets of both number 1 seeds. It could be that I'm just really lucky (I did need New Jersey and Boston to get eliminated in particularly cruel and hilarious fashion for two of those wins). Or it could be that I have something that no other gambler does: a system that can't lose. Either way, here are the rules I've used to pick the winners:

1. Look at the last two months of the regular season. If you're picking between a red-hot team and a team that limped into the playoffs, take the hot team, no matter how good the other team looks.

2. If that's a wash, look at playoff experience. If you're picking between a young, inexperienced team and a veteran team with lots of deep playoff runs, take the veterans unless you've got a really good reason not to.

3. If that's a wash, pick the team with the greatest top-to-bottom depth.

4. If that's a wash, pick the team that plays the nastier, more physical style.

So there you go. If you pay no attention to home ice advantage, regular season performance, or player matchups, you too can understand how the NHL playoffs really work. Got it?

(PS. The one series I didn't call correctly was Chicago-Vancouver. Maybe rule 5 should be to refrain from picking between two teams if you haven't seen either of them play.) 

I'm curious how everyone's picks for the first round have played out so far.

For my part? Apparently I should have decided to gamble my life savings on this year's NHL playoffs. If the Hurricanes and Capitals win tonight, I will be 8/8 in predicting the winners of the first-round series. More specifically, I had the Penguins winning in 6 games and barely missed calling the Detroit and Boston victories exactly (had each winning in 5). The clearest sign that my tea leaves are not leading me astray: I had Anaheim beating San Jose in 6, and specifically noted that Joe Thornton would be invisible during the series.

All of which probably means that I should quit while I'm ahead and not start thinking I know anything about hockey. But I'm curious anyway how everyone else's picks have turned out.

I know that the conventional wisdom in the hockey media is that this year's Penguins team is not as good as last year's team. Yet in spite of the fact that Barry Melrose is never wrong about anything, after watching the Pens blaze through the NHL over the past few months and wax the Flyers in their playoff opener, I've found myself questioning this assumption. Here are 6 reasons why:

1. The two biggest stars. Unlike last season, when Sidney Crosby missed significant time due to ankle injury, this year the team has had basically a full healthy season of Sid. A full year to build on-ice chemistry, and a full year to bond. It just seems like the connection between captain and team is tighter this year. And who can doubt that Evgeni Malkin is a better player this year? Aside from winning his first scoring title, Geno's game has progressed in all areas, particularly his defensive acumen and his on-ice leadership.

2. Chris Kunitz. While we all lamented the departure of local-boy-made-good and all-around great guy Ryan Malone, particularly during the winter slump when his energy and aggressiveness were missed, the acquisition of Kunitz was the best possible response by the front office. In Kunitz we've gotten a tough, young, skilled winger like Malone (but arguably a better player), and one who (unlike Malone) has the experience of helping a team win a Stanley Cup. And yes, we'll be paying Kunitz about $1m less per year than Tampa paid Malone.

3. Bill Guerin. Similarly, the departure of Gary Roberts left the Pens with a significant void of veteran leadership. In acquiring Guerin for a song, Pittsburgh gets a skilled, gritty veteran player with the experience of winning Cups in arguably the most fundamentally sound hockey system in recent memory (the Lemaire/Robinson/Burns-era Devils). Guerin is definitely a step up from Roberts.

4. Marian Hossa. While his hockey skills are obviously above question, signing Hossa would have likely consigned Pittsburgh to Senators/Lightning territory (i.e., being unable to build a solid team because 3 salaries back you up against the salary cap). Would we have been able to extend Fleury and Staal with that contract? Would we have been able to acquire key role players like Kunitz? Doubtful. Moreover, I'm not a fan of adding superstar players as deadline rentals, because it can upset the leadership balance in the locker room. And I would much rather head into the playoffs with guys like Guerin who actually want to be here.

5. Dan Bylsma. This is tough for me to write, because I was not a fan of firing Michel Therrien: ultimately I'm not sure he would have been fired if he'd had a full season of Gonchar, Kunitz, and Guerin. And insofar as he instituted a hard-working, defensively-sound system in Pittsburgh and down through the minor leagues (one which Bylsma emulates), this organization owes Therrien a debt of gratitude for the role he played in taking us to the Finals just 2 years after the nightmare season of '05-'06. If Pittsburgh wins the Stanley Cup this year, I hope Therrien gets one of the rings. All that said, the dynamic between players and coach finally broke down this year. To the extent that the team buys into what Bylsma is doing, in a way that didn't happen with Therrien, they're better off.

6. Experience. It's odd to think about the Penguins this way, because they're such a young team, but last season really turned them into a veteran squad. Most of the players on last year's team had seen a total of 5 playoffs games at the time the postseason began; now those same players can say they came within 2 games of winning a Stanley Cup. And we've added three players with rings (Kunitz, Guerin, Fedotenko) and another (His Satanic Majesty) who played in the Finals with Buffalo in 1999. Last year, we were playing a team that had been there before; this year, whomever comes out of the West won't have that advantage if we make it that far.

Thoughts?