from Ron Cook of the Pitsburgh Post-Gazette,

It seems so wrong to worry about what the Penguins are going to do without Pascal Dupuis.

That’s just not important. All that matters is Dupuis’ long-term health as he battles a serious, recurring problem with blood clots in his lungs. He has to do everything he can to live to be a very old man for his wife and their kids.

“I’ve got to be healthy for them,” Dupuis said Wednesday at what likely was this city’s most somber sports news conference since the Penguins announced beloved coach Badger Bob Johnson had died from brain cancer at 60 in November 1991.

Sadly, the Penguins do this sort of thing too often. Just last month, they announced defenseman Olli Maatta, who isn’t old enough to buy a beer in this state, needed surgery to remove what turned out to be a cancerous tumor from his thyroid. In February, they announced defenseman Kris Letang, then 26, had a stroke. Going back to January 1993, they announced superstar center Mario Lemieux had Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

But the Dupuis news conference was much different. There was a lot of optimism that Maatta, Letang and Lemieux would be able to return to the team. All did, quickly. There was no such optimism with Dupuis, mostly because this is the second time in 11 months he has had a potentially life-threatening blood clot.

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