Peter Taglianetti remembers the 1991 Stanley Cup on the 30th anniversary of the Penguins’ 1st championship
The 1991 Penguins were winning heading into the third period of a playoff game.
“Our team was so loose,” defenseman Peter Taglianetti recalls. “Half the time between periods nobody is in the locker room. Everybody is walking around doing stuff. Joking around. Laughing. The whole year there were never any tense moments whatsoever.”
But they were out of sorts on this night, feeling the pressure of holding their lead.
“We were at each other’s throats,” Taglianetti continued. “Screaming and hollering at each other. This was very uncharacteristic. It was really, really tense.”
The game was Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Minnesota North Stars, so that made the nervous atmosphere understandable. A win would bring the Pens the franchise’s first championship.
But the lead? It was 6-0 after 40 minutes. So why that much concern?
“So (head coach) Bob Johnson walks in,” Taglianetti continued. “He says, ‘Guys, in 20 minutes your name is going to be on the Cup. You are going to live in history, saying you won the Stanley Cup.’”
However, Johnson could sense the tension.
“He looks around the locker room, and he says, ‘Don’t (expletive deleted) it up.’ And the air just went right out of the room,” Taglianetti said with a heavy sigh. “And it just relaxed everybody.”
Johnson’s prophecy would prove true. The Penguins added two more goals. They won Game 6 by a final score of 8-0, and they were Stanley Cup champions for the first time.
Tuesday marks the 30th anniversary of that game. Taglianetti had two assists that night. He joined me for Tuesday’s “Breakfast With Benz” podcast and remembers the tortuous countdown of the third period before he could hoist the Stanley Cup with his teammates.
“It looked like the clock never, ever moved. It felt like 30 minutes went by, and two minutes would go off the clock,” Taglianetti said.
Looking back, that clock on the scoreboard isn’t the only marker of time Taglianetti struggles to comprehend. It’s the calendar, too.
“I couldn’t believe when we did the 20-year reunion that it had been 20 years. Now I can’t believe it’s been 30 years.”
And four more championships later for the franchise as well. But the first one was the hardest to win after 24 years of frustration, bankruptcy and threats of relocation. Which made the coronation game with an eight-goal margin all the sweeter, especially after the team trailed at one point or another in all four of its playoff series.
“If you looked at our roster, we could outscore anybody,” Taglianetti said. “We just had confidence in our guys that we were going to be able to put pucks in the net. Was it going to be a 1-0 game? A 2-0 game? A 5-4 game?”
The Pens averaged 3.95 goals per game en route to that title.
“Look at the goals that Mario (Lemieux) scored in that series. Joey Mullen scored some great goals. Bryan Trottier scored some great goals,” Taglianetti continued. “We had an abundance of guys that could score goals. We just had to figure out what kind of game it was going to be. Was it going to be that pushing and shoving? Was it going to be that wide-open skating game? Then you see how the game starts, and you say, ‘It’s OK. We can do this.’”
Taglianetti credited Johnson for cultivating that confidence.
“He never got flustered. He never raised his voice,” Taglianetti said. “He had this positive energy. Nobody was afraid of making mistakes.”
In our podcast, Taglianetti also reflects on the trade that brought him to Pittsburgh before “The Trade” for Ron Francis, Ulf Samuelsson and Grant Jennings. What arriving with Larry Murphy meant to the team. And what it was like to watch his son — team equipment manager Jon Taglianetti — gain fame for his nifty stick work on a slick assist to Sidney Crosby earlier this season.
FULL. TEAM. EFFORT. pic.twitter.com/pUjTJrUtCx
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) April 16, 2021
Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via X. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.
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