The Penguins status as a rising contender was in serious jeopardy on this day 17 years ago in 2009. What looked like a team on the rise \u2014 the 2008 squad made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final \u2014 was now mired in a rut. Pittsburgh was in 10th place in the conference, five points back of the playoff line. Time was growing short with only 25 games left in the season, continued success and solidifying their place as one of the NHL\u2019s top teams was suddenly in very shaky ground.<\/p>\n
February 14th was the date that ended up turning the season around, a clear early starting point to put the Pens on track to make the playoffs and eventually win the franchise\u2019s third Stanley Cup just a few months later. However, like so many changes, it took going through pain and difficulties to make it to the other side.<\/p>\n
Take that game on 2\/14\/09, against a not-exactly-stacked 11th place Toronto team. The Maple Leafs would outshoot the Pens 41-27 and score six-straight goals to take a 6-2 victory that only further mired the Penguins in their malaise. Not even Pittsburgh-native Bill Thomas scoring his second and final goal for the Pens to give them a 2-0 lead ended up being enough as the game spiraled out of control in the third period that saw them go from leading 2-1 to trailing 3-2 in a span of 19 seconds via two Jason Blake goals. Then it only got uglier from there. Via Hockey-Reference<\/a>:<\/p>\n How did a loss spur a team onto greatness? The answer comes from the details.<\/p>\n Sergei Gonchar made his season debut on this night, coming back from a shoulder injury suffered in preseason. The absence of Gonchar proved to be a major limiting factor in the first two-thirds of the season. His presence as a top defender and power play wizard coming back into the lineup would serve as an important add. Ruslan Fedotenko also rejoined the lineup after missing a month with a hand injury. Fedotenko\u2019s experience and steady play also signified an important return to health that the team would need in the period to come.<\/p>\n And while the team added those two elements, they would drop another after this game. Ray Shero decided to pull the trigger on a coaching change and relieve Michel Therrien of his duties the following morning. In Therrien\u2019s place, a coaching newbie, Dan Bylsma, earned a promotion from his role as the Wilkes-Barre head coach up to the big time. Byslma\u2019s refreshing outlook coming out of the often sour Therrien days provided wind in the team\u2019s sails that would help them along.<\/p>\n Bylsma (and Gonchar\u2026plus later trade addition Bill Guerin) would help spur the Penguins onto a 18-3-4 finish over the rest of the regular season. Pittsburgh would rocket all the way up to fourth place in the conference and draw rival Philadelphia in the first round, a rematch of the prior season\u2019s Eastern Conference Final.<\/p>\n That all had to start somewhere, and the Toronto edition of a \u201cValentine\u2019s Day massacre\u201d ended up being the catalyst for the changes needed to get back to the top.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Penguins status as a rising contender was in serious jeopardy on this day 17 years ago in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[257,385,99],"class_list":["post-468736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-general","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}