Spent part of my weekend looking over travel plans for October, meaning hockey travel plans.

Couldn't help but get caught up with some of the logos on that schedule.

Good morning to you.

Good Tuesday morning. I'm Dan Kovach of schedule. Good morning to you. Good Tuesday morning.

I'm Dan Kovachievich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Penguins. It comes your way

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

shots, Steelers and Pirates that I hope you'll also take the time to check out.

The season begins, of course, on the 7th of October in Manhattan, against Mike Sullivan and the Rangers.

It's going to have all the trappings, at 8 p.m. face-off, ESPN broadcast,

and two games later, they'll play the Rangers here.

That'll be on a Saturday night at PPG Paints Arena.

In between those two, the Penguins will have their home opener on the ninth against the

Islanders.

Now, I'm not going to get into previewing all these teams, including the ones in

the metro, in any sort of detail. I'm nowhere near that yet, but I feel like I can say with

confidence that both of the New York teams are primed to take a step backward. And at the very best, they're going to be middle of the pack in the Eastern Conference.

Does that mean I think the penguins will be better than one or the other?

That's not the point here. That's not the point at all.

Rather, the point is, are they, you know, beatable?

For example, on the 23rd of October, the penguins will face the two-time

defending Stanley Cup champion, Panthers, and they'll do so down in sunrise, and they're going to

have their hands full, and they will be heavy underdogs, as they should be. In these first three

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