All the wrong reasons

So, besides the important one, it was also announced today that some other Atlantic Division captain was skating with his team and could be playing soon. You may have heard about it. In honor of yet another rumor block about the most dominant player of the last two years returning to the ice, I bring you this thing, from professional sportswriter Rob Rossi. Rossi presents 10 reasons (because no one reads articles, but everyone reads lists) that the Penguins can win the Stanley Cup this season. He's right, of course. They can. He's just wrong about why.

So, if you'll forgive my poor attempt at a once-great artform, it's Fire Joe Morgan o'Clock.

10 reasons why Penguins can win Stanley Cup
Reasons 1 through 10 should be "they will likely make the playoffs, and any team can beat any other on any given night, and the Penguins are a pretty good hockey team," but let's dive in anyway.

Great teams don't always win the Stanley Cup - as the 92-93 Penguins, 95-96 Red Wings or any Sharks team from the past decade will tell you - but they are always the most likely teams to win a championship.
Exactly! This piece starts out beautifully, actually: great teams are more likely to win the Cup than less great teams, but that doesn't mean they will. Also, have the Sharks really been a "great team" for the past 10 years? (No.)

The Penguins just might be great.
ONE SENTENCE = ONE PARAGRAPH. LOOK HOW PRODUCTIVE I AM.

They were one of hockey's best teams before the news broke on Tuesday that Sidney Crosby is coming back. Here are 10 reasons to start thinking about that parade route in June. Winning the Stanley Cup is excruciatingly difficult, but the Penguins are starting to emerge as the favorite.
Yes, this is basically the point. The Pens were one of the better teams in the league already, and now they're getting a great player back, so they'll be even scarier. I absolutely agree. "Emerge as the favorite," though? Like, the announcement about Sid today all of a sudden vaults them past everyone else at the top? No. Here's what it is: they're a very good hockey team, poised to do serious damage in the playoffs. That was true yesterday, and it will be true tomorrow. This is easy to know.

We'll go in reverse order, just for drama.
Fantastic! I love drama! And one-sentence paragraphs!

10. The East isn't very good
Also, I am very angry about what President Bush is doing to this country, and I am excited about Christopher Nolan's new Batman movies, and this new band Daughtry seems interesting, and my point is it must be like 5 years ago or something. Because here is what the NHL looks like right now:

Top 10 teams by points percentage: 5 Eastern, 5 Western (#1 is the New York Rangers). Top 5 teams by goal differential: 3 Eastern, 2 Western (#1 is the Boston Bruins). Top 5 in goals scored: 3 Eastern, 2 Western (#1 is the Philadelphia Flyers). In goals against: 2 Eastern, 3 Western. Top 3 point-scorers in the league are Evgeni Malkin, Steven Stamkos, and Claude Giroux. Top 3 goal-scorers are Stamkos, Malkin, and Corey Perry (Perry's in third). Top 3 in plus/minus are Tyler Seguin, Ian White, and Patrice Bergeron, in that order (Del Zotto is 4th, by the way). Top save percentage is, of course, Lundqvist. People largely consider Lundqvist the front-runner for the Vezina and are split between him and Malkin for the Hart.

The cutoff for the playoffs, should the season end today, is 73 points in the West and 72 in the East. Meanwhile, at the bottom, the worst team in the East has 60 points, ahead of both Edmonton (56) and Columbus (47) in the West. Not only do the Penguins play in arguably the better conference right now, they almost certainly play in the best division in the NHL. But please, Rossi, tell us why the East isn't that good right now.

Before we even get to the Penguins, let's analyze the rest of the league. The Rangers are running away with the conference and deserve credit for their terrific season. They're really, really good.
Thank you.

But take a look at that lineup. Can the Rangers really score with the Penguins in a seven-game series? I don't think so. It would be a wonderful series, but eventually, Crosby and Evgeni Malkin will produce their points. They always do.
In 4 games so far, the Rangers have scored 8 goals, and the Penguins have scored 10. I'm not so sure you're right here. Your flippant "I don't think so" and assertion that the Penguins have 2 fantastic centers (and they do) don't quite cut it for me. How about a snide one-sentence paragraph to push me over the edge?

The Penguins match up well against the Rags.
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Philadelphia? Talented, yes. But the Penguins are way better in net, better on the blue and at least comparable at forward. Crosby will never let the Penguins lose to that team in a series, anyway. Honest. He loathes them that much.
The Penguins are somewhat better in net. They think they're a lot better in net. And if you're talking tandem, I might take Bryzgalov-Bobrovsky over Fleury-ZamboniDriver. But here's the real key, folks: Crosby will never let the Penguins lose this series. It's not goaltending, defense, or forwards that will really decide this one; it's loathing.

Boston? The Bruins made their run, and had a wonderful stretch at the season's midway point, but they can be had. They suddenly feel stale.
Boston can't win! They won last year!

New Jersey? Scary for Pens because they struggle with the Devils, but cream rises to the top. The Pens are just a better team.

Ottawa? Great story, but not built for playoff success.
This is all true, except for the "great story" part. Send us off with another dismissive sentegraph, if you would.
No team should scare the Penguins when the postseason begins.

Man, I'm already talking too much. I'll deal with the other 9 more quickly, I promise.

9. Special, special teams
The summary of this bit is "the Pens have a good power play and a good penalty kill." And that is entirely accurate, and it's a solid reason the Pens are a good team (with or without Crosby). Rossi is 1/2 so far.

8. Marc-Andre Fleury
Oh, here we go.

He's the most underrated athlete in Pittsburgh, perhaps the NHL's most underrated player and the best big game goalie in hockey.
Athletes in Pittsburgh more underrated than Fleury: Chris Kunitz, Kris Letang, Charlie Batch, Evgeni Malkin, Byron Leftwich, Daniel Sepulveda, probably some Pirates but it's hard to tell
Athletes in Pittsburgh more overrated than Fleury: Ben Roethlisberger, Bill Mazeroski, pretty much no one else
NHL players more underrated than Fleury: Tyler Seguin, Dustin Byfuglien, those 3 Penguins I mentioned, Radim Vrbata, a whole lot of other people because Fleury is not actually underrated at all
Meaningless ways to describe a good player who happened to get wins on the right team at the right time: "clutch," "has what it takes," "big-game," "a finisher"
Goalies (who play regularly) with better save percentages than Fleury: I am not listing them all, there are nineteen of them

Fleury is 27, just entering his prime and already has a Stanley Cup ring that's getting dusty. He is playing the best hockey of his career, finally using his unprecedented athleticism in perfect harmony with a newfound mastery of positioning and poise.
I sat staring at this sentence for like 10 minutes, trying to figure out how to respond to it. Decided to just let it lie there.

For whatever reason, Fleury doesn't receive the hype of goalies like Henrik Lundqvist and Tim Thomas.
I know the reason. Can you guess what it is, Rob?
But I'd take him against anyone.
No, you wouldn't. If you could choose between two goalies, and one is good, and the other is better, you'd take the better one. Because you'd want the best goalie you could have. Everyone, listen to me. Marc-Andre Fleury is a completely adequate, consistent, NHL-caliber goaltender. Good enough to win the Cup. That's a great thing; be happy with him, and accept who he is. You don't need to have Henrik Lundqvist in net to be a great hockey team. But, like, you don't have Henrik Lundqvist in net. OK? It's fine. Really.

7. The three-center model

When you get a chance, research the centers on the Eastern Conference's top teams.

Then, think about Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal.

No one can match those three. No one comes close.

And those three haven't lost in a playoff series when they all played each game since 2008 against Detroit. And they were children then.

Now they're men and they will be very difficult for anyone to stop.

7 sentences. 5 paragraphs.

Dumb way to say a reasonable thing. Of course no set of centers in the NHL is going to compare to a set including Crosby and Malkin. That's why the Pens are so scary.

You don't need to talk about how they're men.

And the playoff series stat is dumb.

See how annoying it is to read an article that does this?

It doesn't help you make your point. At all.

6. Perfect mix of age
The summary here is that the Penguins have a relatively young team with a lot of playoff experience. That's true. Fine. But then:

Look at a few of their players who don't have a ring: Arron Asham. Richard Park. Steve Sullivan. Zbynek Michalek. Paul Martin. James Neal. Matt Niskanen. These guys are real pros, guys who would do anything to win a championship.
You know who else has real pros who want very badly to win the Stanley Cup? Every hockey team, ever.

5. Fresh legs
Yeah, fine, I guess. This is dumb, but this post is too long already, and it isn't dumb enough for me to talk about.

4. The Blue Line
Teams often lose playoff series because of deficiencies on the blue line. Subpar defensemen are always the easiest targets for teams to expose.
OK, that's reasonable.

Where is the Penguins' weakness? Sure, Paul Martin and Zbynek Michalek have struggled most of the season, but they've been terrific during the past few weeks. Maybe they aren't out of the woods, but they've been legitimate top-four defensemen recently, and are showing signs of confidence that I haven't seen from them.
So... the number four reason the Penguins can win the Cup is that Martin and Michalek aren't entirely terrible? I'm not convinced. Can I get a sentegraph-by-sentegraph list of the Pens' D-men?

Kris Letang? He's one of the top five defenseman in the NHL.
Kris Letang is great. But is he really top five in the NHL? Nicklas Lidstrom, Zdeno Chara, Marc Staal, Shea Weber, Dan Girardi, Ryan Suter, Duncan Keith, Drew Doughty? An argument can be made, but you can't just assert "he's one of the top five defenseman [sic] in the NHL and not, like, back it up with anything.

Brooks Orpik has been great during the past two months.
Brooks Orpik has been great during most of his career. If you don't get that, you don't deserve him. We'll take him.

Matt Niskanen is really solid
That sentegraph is really a waste of space in this column.

Deryk Engelland is the team's most underrated player.
I don't know if I can trust you on this, Rob Rossi. Trusted sportswriter Rob Rossi recently told me that Marc-Andre Fleury is the most underrated athlete in all of Pittsburgh, and possibly in the whole NHL. You should give Rob Rossi a call, Rob Rossi. Work this out.

Ben Lovejoy is better than you realize.
How do you know?

Simon Despres as insurance?
I'm not entirely certain what you're asking me.

No weaknesses here.
Maybe Rob Rossi thinks that if you put a sentence in its own paragraph, it works like some kind of Jedi mind trick.

3. Evgeni Malkin
Yes. You can spend a few paragraphs elaborating on this if you like, but you don't need to, and I'm not going to bother reading them. Evgeni Malkin is fucking great at hockey, and so he will help his hockey team win games.

2. Dan Bylsma
His accomplishments are often lost, and this is unfortunate.
Dan Bylsma took over a fantastic hockey team, replacing a terrible coach, and won the Cup. No one overlooks this. This is not lost. Accomplishments of Dan Bylsma's that are often lost: killer fashion sense, apparent ability to grow an inspiring mustache overnight, by sheer will.

What an exceptional coach. From the day Bylsma arrived, the Penguins have been a great hockey team. He has dealt with adversity brilliantly, has proven himself a fine tactician and has fixed the power play. Bylsma and his staff - Tony Granato, Todd Reirden and Gilles Meloche are as good as it gets - will have the Penguins prepared this spring, no matter the opponent.
I guess? The Pens have a fine coaching staff. Bylsma and his crew have done a great job of managing their team. Their team is very, very talented. He's the right coach for them. He's not the #2 reason they're a good team.

1. Sidney Crosby
Obviously, Crosby is at the top of a list entitled "top ten reasons the Pens could win the Cup if Crosby returns." But what can you tell us about him, Rob Rossi?

Yeah, that guy.
...Yeah. That guy.

We know Crosby is hockey's greatest player, and we also realize that he's potentially one massive hit away from having his career altered permanently.
Is it possible that Rob Rossi actually did write this article a few years ago? That would explain the "Eastern Conference sucks" thing, and it would explain why Rossi seems to think Crosby hasn't already suffered a massive hit that permanently altered his career. Maybe I take it all back. Rossi's fucking prescient, shame on the Trib for posting this article so late.

And we also know that this is Sidney Crosby, and that he's one of the rarest of athletes, whose legacy was seemingly written by the hockey gods a long time ago.
I think you meant to say "media" when you said "gods" just now, Rob.

Miss 14 months with a concussion, career in jeopardy, then return to win a Stanley Cup?
Are you asking us? I mean, I guess maybe he could do that. He could also play three games and sit out for another 8 months. That's how concussions work. Either way, the Penguins are a very good hockey team, and it would be silly to count them out in the post-season. Is that where you're going with this? Or are you saying that that's what Crosby's going to do? Answer me in a final, curt, unexplained sentegraph.

Yeah, he's that guy.
Well, I'm sold.