I'm not super big on fake mid-season awards.

It's kind of a trite vehicle for people in my industry to drum up content.

But I'm also not exactly above it.

Good morning to you. Good Friday morning.

I'm Dan Kovachvich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports, and this is Daily Shot of Penguins. It comes your way

right and early every weekday. If you're into football and or baseball, I also offer daily shots of

Steelers and Pirates in the same place that you found this. Penguins versus the Panthers tonight, Sunrise Florida,

a second crack at taking down the defending champs again.

And depending on which side of the ledger you're on,

with this recent discussion among the fan base as to which is more real the

10-5-1 run or the fact that the penguins have just been winning one and losing one and winning

one and losing one for a couple of weeks now. I prefer the 10-5-and-one in large part because the penguins have scored a lot of goals.

And I've long been of the opinion that when the penguins, maybe more than any franchise in the NHL, are scoring goals there themselves,

regardless of what they're founded on, regardless of what they need to be making their top priority,

when they're scoring, they're at least feeling something, you know?

And as it would turn out, the 61 goals that the Penguins have scored in that 10-5-1 run,

it's number one in the league.

Number one. As such, in looking at my

mid-season player of the year, I'm going to move away from the obvious, which would always be,

almost always be Sidney Crosby, even though I don't doubt for a second that he is absolutely

that, and instead do something that

he himself would do, which is to point to somebody else who's maybe risen up, who's gone

...