On verge of clinching, Penguins don't take playoff berth for granted
DETROIT — Nick Bjugstad was on some pretty good teams in Florida before he was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins in February. Counted Aleksander Barkov, Aaron Ekblad, Vince Trocheck and Roberto Luongo among his all-star teammates.
Yet in his six full seasons with the Panthers, the team made the playoffs just once.
The Penguins have made qualifying for the playoffs every year look relatively easy over the past decade or so, but for the NHL at large, it’s really not.
“From the start of the season, it’s an absolute grind,” Bjugstad said. “Every point literally matters. Sometimes it’s hard to realize that at the beginning of the season, but you don’t want to be looking back at the end of the year, going, ‘I wish we would have had this one point here or this point there.’ ”
The Penguins came into Tuesday with the chance to clinch a playoff berth for the 13th straight season with a win over Detroit or a Montreal loss to Tampa Bay.
It’s the longest active streak of consecutive playoff appearances in the league and the longest in franchise history, topping the run of 11 straight from 1991-2001.
It’s also longer than the longest active streaks in the NFL (New England, 10) and Major League Baseball (Los Angeles Dodgers, six).
They’ve got a long way to go to match the longest active streak in the NBA (San Antonio, 22) or the NHL’s all-time record (Boston, 26 from 1968-96).
The closest the Penguins came to missing the playoffs during the streak came in 2014-15, when they needed a win over Buffalo on the final day of the regular season to qualify.
Captain Sidney Crosby is aware of that history. He also is aware of the struggles the Penguins have gone through this season just to come into the final three games of the year with a chance to clinch.
The Penguins were in last place in the conference as recently as the end of November and outside the playoff picture as recently as March 1.
As such, he doesn’t take a postseason berth for granted.
“I think, as players, you appreciate how tough it is,” Crosby said. “You see the amount of fight that it takes to get there. We’re still in a situation where we’ve got to get points. Nothing’s guaranteed for us. Even with some of the games we’ve put together and the amount of points we have, we’re still not there yet, so we’ve got to continue to push. I think we all understand how hard it is. Year after year, it doesn’t get any easier.”
Jonathan Bombulie is the TribLive assistant sports editor. A Greensburg native, he was a hockey reporter for two decades, covering the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins for 17 seasons before joining the Trib in 2015 and covering the Penguins for four seasons, including Stanley Cup championships in 2016-17. He can be reached at jbombulie@triblive.com.
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