Oh yes, you can shut down C&M, together or separately-- as long as they stick to their own lines. But if Bylsma continues the7-man defensive matchups, that means C&M take turns, each, centering the fourth line and, in effect, get themselves each TWO lines. That means either the 4 strongest Wings D's will also have way too many shift to do, or the rest of the Wings will have to try to do what they would usually leave to their best D-men.

And then there are the other Pens who have been racking up points, too. Stop Crosby and you leave yourself open to Guerin and/or Kunitz. Stop Malkin and you leave yourself open to Talbot and/or Fedotenko. Staal, Satan, Cooke, Kennedy also can snipe, bigtime, and have. Gonchar and Letang, pow'ful scoring D-men.... look out, look out, Osgood-- which of these guys is the one to watch?!?!?


In the games where the played well last year, other teams had the greatest difficulty dealing with these mulitple sources of shots-- whole lines worth of firepower, times 4 lines. What is better this year is that C&M use their wongs better, have better-for-them wings to play with, and have a better gameplan to play within. Plus experiecne, yadayada.... Plus great depth from their farm team-- people who have logged significant, good mintes in P'burgh the last two seasons who ALSO have relevant experience.

Add banged-up Wings to THAT (WingDings, nononono) and it looks a tossup.

But I am still freaked out to find we are down to the last 4 packages of frozen barbecue, our traditional hockey-dinner for winning games. I'd rather have 6-7 of them suckers.... but that's why I froze the chicken halves the Lions were distribting last week. I gots me 3 different BBQ sauces here to go on THEM. :~)

GO PENS!

Your bets, Tex?

~Susan