Pens react to drawing Flyers for Round 1

Heading into Saturday night's NHL schedule of games, the Penguins had three different possible opponents for the First Round of the 2018 Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Columbus Blue Jackets were the most likely option, but there was also a chance that the Penguins could draw the Philadelphia Flyers or New Jersey Devils, all of whom had games that day.

And when the final horn sounded on those matchups, it became official: the Penguins would open the postseason against their cross-state rivals in Philadelphia.

"We knew it was wide open," captain Sidney Crosby said. "I don't know if there was a year to compare it to with so many possibilities down the stretch. It says how tight it is and we knew that with basically five teams that were pretty tightly matched, that it could work out a lot of different ways."

And the Penguins couldn't be more thrilled that it worked out how it did.

"What's better than playing Philly to start off the Stanley Cup playoffs?" Carl Hagelin queried with a grin.

Only three players on the current roster have played against Philadelphia in the postseason. Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang have all faced the Flyers three times in their careers.

Pittsburgh won the first two matchups in 2008 and '09, while the Flyers exacted their revenge in 2012 in what turned out to be arguably the most bizarre series in franchise history. And though it happened a while ago, it can be difficult to forget that most recent matchup with just how strange that six-game affair was.

It stands as the highest-scoring series in Penguins history, which is saying a lot considering the offensive talents the franchise has been gifted with over the years. The two teams combined for 56 goals - with the Flyers putting up back-to-back eight-goal efforts in Games 2 and 3 and the Pens scoring 10 times in Game 4 - numerous fights and plenty of bad blood.

"For whatever reason it was just a wild series and you won't see anything like that for a really long time," Crosby said. "With the fights and the amount of goals that were scored, the margin of the games, it was just crazy. It's hard to compare but certainly you can take lessons from it.

"Both teams were pretty heavily involved physically and emotionally, but when you're on the wrong side and you don't convert on the power play and they end up making you pay it's a tough lesson. But I think you have to learn those sometimes. You have to find that balance and our experience since then will help us."

As Letang wryly joked, they've grown a lot since then.

"We're all over 30 years old now, we're all supposed to be mature," he said. "Whatever it was, it was in the moment, emotional. We have a different team, different experience, different coaching staff, so I don't think we look at it anymore."

Head coach Mike Sullivan is part of that different coaching staff, and has done a tremendous job of teaching his team to become mentally strong and resilient, and establishing a certain level of discipline and focus that he feels is essential to winning.

"I'm a strong believer that if a team is going to maximize its potential and contend for a championship, the first rule of thumb Is to become a team that doesn't beat itself," he said. "This is something we speak about with our group often. And it's easy in an emotional game to lose focus. It's easy to lose control of your emotions and that's where a certain level of discipline and diligence has to come into play. I think our team has shown it over time here that when we play with a certain level of focus, a certain level of discipline and that diligence shift in and shift out, then that's when our team is at its very best."

The Penguins are a different team, and so are the Flyers. Only five players remain on their roster from that series: Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek, Wayne Simmonds, Sean Couturier and Matt Read. And while the matchups between the teams are still intense, they're focused more on what happens between the whistles then after them.

"They're skilled and they're fast," Letang said. "They have good defensemen that can join the rush, they're a really good team. They finished what, two points behind us? They had a great year and they have good players, it's going to be a big challenge."

And it's one they're more than ready for.

"This is great," Patric Hornqvist said with a huge smile on his face. "This is the best part of the season. Finally we're here and we have a great matchup in front of us. This is a really good Philly team and we know all about them, they know all about us and the rivalry here and all that. It's going to be a hell of a series."

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