You know all those times you wonder, why am I doing this to myself?

Why? Why?

And then along comes a night like this.

Way up here in the mountains.

Suddenly, you're a mile high good morning to you good tuesday morning i'm dan kovych of dk pittsburg sports and 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 of Steelers and

pirates. I hope you check those out as well. Penguin 7, Avalanche 2 here in Denver. And as a great

man used to say, you had to be here to believe it. A couple of early goals from

Yvgeny Malkin back from his suspension. Big early breakaway goal from Anthony Mantha.

Helmer Soderblum with his first with the penguins. Eric Carlson again goal and two assists.

Brian Rust with a clean breakaway finishes in the five hole.

Noel O'Chari gets symbolic chili for everyone.

Ryan Shea, I thought, was superlative defensively.

Arter Shilov's solid at times better than that when the game was still in question.

And, you know, in times like these, I turn to Rust.

And where they've been all season.

I know you're past the measuring stick point here.

But at the same time, I mean, that's got to be something special for you guys. Yeah. Big win for us. I think you look up and down our lineup. I think everybody played a strong game. Everybody contributed. Got some big-time offense there. I think if it wasn't for Artie, I think the first period would have been 4, 4, or 5, 4,

I don't know, it was crazy, but he made a whole bunch of saves for us, especially in that first period. And then I think we made plays when they were made, made life hard on them, especially in the last 40 minutes. And I think it gets a team like that with that much skill, that's exactly what you gotta do.

You're always my guy when I got to look ahead but at the

same time I mean the expectations for this team internally not what we think what anybody else

thinks when you have a game like this do they get bolstered um they've been high all year yes. So I don't know how much higher you can get than high, but I think for us in this room, we've the entire year doesn't matter what anybody else is saying. We've demanded excellence, and we've demanded that we play good hockey and still compete in this league, and that's exactly what we've done. And we're going to continue that throughout March and April and hopefully we'll be on that.

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