A few days off - 7-16-09

Let's not forget...up until February 15, the league will play a much more compressed schedule than it usually does.  The Pens will play 62 of their 82 games between October 2 and February 15...a span of 137 days by my idiot's math.  That's a lot of games compressed into a much shorter amount of time than normal.  That may come into play here as well.

As you said, Seth, the short break last year didn't seem to mean a whole lot.  But what will the combined effect of two straight short summers and a compressed schedule of games have on this team?

Also a thought to be thrown in: it's not like come the Olympic break everyone from the Penguins will be sitting, sipping their favorite Canadian brew and acting like spectators.  Our top guys (and pretty much every team's top guys) are going to be representing their countries as this goes on.  It may not be as rough of a brand of hockey as in the NHL, but you know they're going to be giving it nearly every ounce they've got because short of the Stanley Cup, Olympic gold is #1 in a hockey player's heart.  And for some of them it's may even be bigger.

I doubt that anything they did this summer will be a tiring as starting the season in Sweden.

Just to comment on what the goat said, the NHL was probably quite pleased when the Penguins won the Cup.  Criticts have been complaining that it is too tiring and unfair to send teams to Europe.  They also complain that the season is too long.  For the Penguins to overcome both feats in the same year should shoot down those arguements for a few years at least.