Therrien Liked What He Saw

The Pittsburgh Penguins webpage is reporting that new forward Ruslan Fedotenko will be getting another chance to play alongside phenom center Sidney Crosby as well as Miroslav Satan. This is a line that a few reporters (as well as fans) have unofficially made the "dream team" of the Penguins. I like this line for the simple fact that it doesn't include Dupuis (or Taffe - did you happen to catch that? How crazy was that?).

If you noticed, I said that Fedotenko will be getting another chance because Therrien tried using him on that line during the second half of the last Toronto Maple Leafs game last Friday. They've been keeping with this line in practice and plan to use it in the Penguins final pre-season game in Helsinki, Finland against the Jokerit on Thursday.

“We put (Fedotenko) on that line in the second half of our game in Toronto last Friday, and I liked what I saw, liked their chemistry,” Penguins coach Michel Therrien said. “So we’re going to have them practice together, and we’ll try it again on Thursday. I think it’s a good combination.”

Therrien stopped short of committing to the Fedotenko-Crosby-Satan line for the NHL regular season opener Saturday against Ottawa in Stockholm, but it’s clear that if the three diverse forwards continue to adjust and play well together, he’ll continue to roll them out there.

With setting up this line, the Penguins will now have 2 lines for opposing teams to contend with: Fedotenko - Crosby - Satan AND Staal - Malkin - Sykora. This line may just very well turn out to be the piece of the puzzle the team was missing during the SCF last season. Penguins have a lot of depth - enough to create 2 amazing lines - and there's only so much one team can do to stop one amazing line let alone 2 of them! Not only do these 2 lines have chemistry in common, they have a few other things in common as well. For instance, Malkin and Sykora previously played alongside each other in the Magnitogorsk league so they know each others thoughts and moves pretty well. Although not to as great of an extent as them, Fedotenko and Satan were on the New York Islanders together and were occasionally placed on the same line creating a familiarity with each other's games according to Fedotenko.

Could this be it; could the search finally be over? Could this be the "secret combination" the Penguins have been in search of for Sid for the past several seasons? We can only hope! I'm getting knots in my stomach just thinking about it (oh - the possibilities for this team; if not this year then an endless number of years to come)!