On April 2, the Pittsburgh Penguins faced off against the New York Islanders on what would decide whether the former would make it to playoffs or not. The team was able to pull out a dominating victory against their opponent winning 5-0. All this was done without their starting goalie, Marc-Andre Fleury and two other superstar players, Evgeni Malkin and Olli Maatta.
Making it playoffs means a lot for the team both for this year and next year. Not only does being included in this mean they get their chance to play more, show what they can do and have the chance of winning the coveted Stanley Cup, but they also keep ahold of their 10 year streak of making the playoffs, second only to the Detroit Red Wings who have 24 consecutive years.
What does making it to playoffs mean for next year? Well for example, it means that Pittsburgh doesn’t get their first round pick for 2016, which is being given to Toronto for the earlier trade of Phil Kessel for Kasperi Kapanen. Pittsburgh now gets back a second round pick that they had given to Toronto at the 2015 trade deadline. As of now, the Pittsburgh Penguins have five draft picks, two in the second round, and the others each in the fourth, fifth and sixth rounds.
Making it to playoffs can be seen as both a bad and good thing for this reason. Now that the team is included they have a chance to make it far and maybe even win playoffs all together. Even though they won’t be getting their draft pick after winning the Stanley Cup, the fact that they won it all means that they have succeed in their goal. However it can be seen as bad because now they have lost their first round draft pick and only have a second round pick. This is an opinion that you can decide on for yourself.
Going into their last game before playoffs against the Flyers, they had out the mentioned players before, Fleury and Malkin. In the game the Penguins played their back-up goalie Matt Murray, who got hit while defending and lost his helmet during the game. This knocked him out of the line-up and now puts Pittsburgh in a position to only be able to use their third and fourth string goalies in playoffs. The wish of many Pittsburgh fans is that the on and off Marc Andre Fleury will be healthy to at least come in and save them from the supposedly “three game losing streak” in the first round of playoffs.
With the first game in the first round completed for the Penguins and a win, the fear of the losing streak in the first round of playoffs has been quelled, and thus gives hope to the disbelievers. With the second game, it’s still unknown as to who will start in net in that game, as Fleury gets over the concussion and becomes more able to play in net and Zatkoff doing well in the first game with 35 saves.