I'll bet if I asked, even a diehard fan, to name, oh, I don't know, a half dozen or more members of the Penguins who'd been responsible for the team.

Having done significantly better since around Thanksgiving,

Eric Carlson's name wouldn't show up.

And so I'm here to take care of that today, hopefully.

Good morning to you.

Good Wednesday morning.

I'm Dan Kovachvich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports.

This is Daily Shot of Penguins.

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in the same place that you found this.

The Penguins are out on the West Coast, of course.

They'll be facing the ducks tomorrow night in Anaheim looking for, wow, some way to follow up on what they just did to the Kings across town.

Won't be easy, but it'll be made easier by knowing that their highest paid players been

one of their best players again.

This after a slow start, and the slow start after Carlson had missed much of training

camp and really was just kind of thrown into things once the regular season got going.

And I'm making excuses for him or whatever.

I'm just laying out what's real, okay?

Because he did not perform anywhere near his peak for the first.

Oh, I'd say the first month and a half, maybe the first seven, eight weeks even.

...