Once again, the Pittsburgh Penguins are Stanley Cup champions.
He stopped me before I finished the question: "Just one?" he said.
Pekka Rinne has no idea whether he will have another opportunity to play in a Stanley Cup final. "This isn't the end, you know".
And maybe better than some of those combinations.
In addition to back-to-back Cups and back-to-back Conn Smythe Trophies as the playoff MVP, Crosby led Team Canada to the championship in the preseason World Cup of Hockey and is a Hart Trophy finalist for the regular-season MVP along with the Oilers' Connor McDavid and Blue Jackets' goalie Sergei Bobrovsky. If they won the Cup this year, he would have surely retired. Los Angeles Kings won twice and looked to be all set up with Drew Doughty and Jonathan Quick and Anze Kopitar and Jeff Carter all signed long-term.
This Stanley Cup, though, was as much about the will of the captain as anything. Icing lines centered by Crosby and Malkin are another. And it's not really that close.
Head coach Mike Sullivan was the first person off the plane and he hoisted the Stanley Cup high over his head.
Instead of making the Cup larger, they take off the top ring and put a brand-new ring on the bottom of the cup. They were dominant teams, and the best of them may have been the 1993 team that was upset by the Islanders in the Eastern Conference final.
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Chicago won with Duncan Keith on defence. Colorado had Rob Blake. Crosby carried this team to a championship, and that's what the great ones all do. Instead, it will go on permanent display at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. "Pittsburgh has no first-round picks anymore", he added. They've never been in this position before and we know what it takes to get here. "We lost a lot of guys to injuries". We were given no shot, no chance, and he just kept us in there, so those two guys come to mind. I think people assumed when I tried it, it was getting better, but it was getting worse. "They traded their first-round pick from the year before, they traded their first-round pick for this year and now they've traded their first-round pick for next year".
"You gotta get on the train with him or you're going to get run over", general manager Jim Rutherford said during the celebrations, per Greg Wyshynski of Yahoo Sports.
"I had to say that's one of the most special moments in my life", said Murray, who called Fleury a "special person" and mentor. "It was pretty hard what they were able to do night in and night out". The reason Jordan is the greatest, though, is because of his will to win, his drive and his competitiveness lifted his teams to a whole different level.
What they don't have is Crosby and Malkin. The rest of the Penguins forwards - Phil Kessel and Jake Guentzel aside - are meh.
"For some of those guys, that was their second or third Cup", Subban said of Pittsburgh.
Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Matt Murray and Co. worked harder to win their back-to-back titles than any National Hockey League team.
"There's obviously disappointment and losing is never easy".
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