from Dejan Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,

Because now it gets real. The Garden crowd that had turned on Rick Nash and the Rangers will be back on their side in a boisterous (bordering on obnoxious) New York way. The Rangers will feel momentum for the first time. The Rangers will know that the Penguins, to paraphrase an old Tom Barrasso line, will be playing a game they didn't really want to play.

Awesome, I say.

Even in the regular season when the Penguins would sleepwalk through losses to cellar-dwellers, they'd rise up and beat the elite likes of the Blackhawks, Kings, Sharks, Ducks and yeah, those Bruins. That's why I say bring on Boston and Tuukka Rask and Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron, and I'm not even sure if I'm kidding.

Things have been way too cozy for the Penguins this postseason, what with the Blue Jackets being all banged up and the Rangers being roiled early this round by the NHL's silly scheduling.

Well, all that's out the window, including the fatigue factor.

Here comes adversity.

I asked Crosby if it might not be a blessing: “You know, we've shown that when we're more desperate, we're better. But that doesn't mean it's acceptable to play the way we did tonight. There's no excuse for it.”

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