Pens = Jazz or Pens = Bulls?

I'm skipping the usual 'Morning Dump' today. There was no hockey game yesterday, and there's none today, so a much needed break and breather is appreciated. Besides, I can't give much a game recap of a game that I stopped watching in the second period. Also yesterday, the Pirates lost, Snell was mediocre to suck, water's wet, and the sky is blue. Basically, nothing of note happened.

I did however want to delve into a column that I saw linked on Seth's P-G blog yesterday. Someone in Denver, and this was so dumb you'd have sworn that Woody Paige wrote it, said the Pens are the Jazz of the NHL.

The analogy he was trying to make is obvious, that the Pens have great players, but they're losers and will always be losers that don't win championships. Ok, fair enough, so far they haven't won any championships.

Look deeper though and you see how this analogy is ridiculous.

The main conflicting point is that the Jazz (and the Suns in his analogy) were teams of veterans when they made it to the NBA Finals back in the day. KJ, Chambers, Barkley, Stockton, Malone, etc were all older league vets that those teams were built around. The Pens are still built around players between the ages of 20-24. If they fail to win with this group and they're all in their 30's, then I'll buy that argument the writer's trying to make.

Also, the Jazz and Suns had the great misfortune, or bad luck, of being good when one Michael Jordan was playing.

Which leads me to making an analogy of my own. I think that these Pens are more like Jordan's Bulls before they won a championship than the Jazz/Suns.

Anyone who is old enough to remember the late 80's (I'm 31 so screw you all) will recall that the same thing the writer of the article is saying about the Pens ("losers", "great players that will never win", etc) was being said about Jordan back then because the Bulls couldn't get past another Detroit team, the Pistons.

The similarities are numerous.

The Bulls were led at the time by Jordan. He was a young dynamic scorer, face of the league, league MVP, most popular player, and the player most opponents feared as an individual. Crosby/Malkin are Jordanesque, the best in the league, MVP's, but not quite champions yet. Substitute Crosby/Malkin for Jordan.

The Pistons were a complete team. They were battle-tested and knew how to win. They had the air of "been there, done that" about them and nothing would rattle them. They also knew how to shut down Jordan. They are a team of veteran champions who know how to get it done and beat the young team. Substitute the Wings for the Pistons.

As we recall, and from the link for you young pups, you can see that the Bulls got beat badly by the Pistons the first time they played in a playoff series. The next year, they played better, but still lost. The following year, they met them again, and lost once more. All told, they lost three times to the Pistons. Each year got more heated and competitive, just like we're seeing now with the Pens and Wings.

All those losses by Jordan and the Bulls led to two camps. One was that Jordan would never be a winner, just a great player and scorer. Another was that he was still going through growing pains. Which is exactly the camps the Pens/Crosby/Malkin have themselves in now.

Finally though, the Bulls broke through against that same Pistons team on the fourth try in the playoffs. They used all of that learned experience from the previous three losses, beat their nemesis, and went on to win the first of their 6 championships.

Now the current series isn't of course over, but since that article was written and was so ridiculous, it can be discussed. The Pens can change the conversation forever this week with back-to-back wins.