Blues @ Penguins

8:00 p.m. | Tv: NBCSN

Quest for Three-Peat

It’s banner raising night for the Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh Penguins and the Penguins open the season with a bit of a gauntlet against the upper tier of the Western Conference.

Pittsburgh host the St. Louis Blues tonight, followed by a trip to Chicago Thursday night for a back-to-back situation and then back home Saturday night for a Stanley Cup rematch.

For a club whose regular’s looked quite lackadaisical in the preseason finale against Columbus, this tough stretch to open the season could be good for the Penguins.

Pittsburgh having a Cup Hangover under Mike Sullivan would be a surprising development.

“I think it’s crystal clear what our identity is, and our players understand that,” Sullivan said today. “I think every team’s a work in progress. I don’t know that we’ve ever arrived. We’re always striving to get better.”

Player Scuttlebutt

— While Ryan Reaves faces his former team tonight, so does Oskar Sundqvist.

Sundqvist will open the season as the Blues third line center and will play on a line with Magnus Paajarvi and Tage Thompson tonight.

With the Penguins already concerned about their bottom-6 centers, this trade is going to be magnified all season if Sundqvist makes a sudden impact for St. Louis.

Expectation Game for Antti Niemi

The plan is for Matt Murray to play around 55-60 games but the only thing left on his resume is staying healthy for a full season. If an injury pops up to Murray, are the Penguins still in good hands?

What gets lost is that in 38 games last season Marc Andre Fleury produced a 3.02 goals-against-average and .909 save percentage. If Antti Niemi gives the Penguins even those type of numbers which are not good, this team will still score enough goals where they’ll be fine.

From strictly a numbers standpoint, every player the Penguins lost from their Cup run played at a replacement level during the regular season, but they also had their own unique impact beyond the numbers that makes replacing the likes of Chris Kunitz, Nick Bonino tougher than just what they produced statistically.

Phil Kessel on Notice

League sources say talk around the summer and the same talk has even surfaced in recent weeks was that Jim Rutherford’s dream move with this group would be finding a trade partner for Phil Kessel and then having the cap space and pieces to land [hide] Jordan Staal.

Problem is it takes two sides to make a deal and as I indicated in July when some of the Staal rumors surfaced from the local media, Hurricanes GM Ron Francis won’t even take a phone call from the Penguins on Staal, a source says.

That hasn’t changed, a source reiterated today.

Kessel is just a fascinating player right now.

He’s coming off a 70 point season including a career high mark in assists and had 23 points in 25 playoffs. Yet, the feeling around the league is that Kessel’s expiration date in Pittsburgh is coming.

The Penguins did little to quiet the rumors this summer, many around the league say they were even the one’s putting it out there. In fact, when Kessel met with Mike Sullivan in August, a source close to Kessel says the Penguins coach didn’t refute that the Penguins had discussed trade scenario’s with other clubs about Kessel.

Pittsburgh had substantive talks in early July with a Western Conference team.

Kessel has been put on notice.

There’s going to be a ton of focus on his goals total again this season. His shooting percentage hasn’t been higher than 10.0 in over three seasons. Expectations again should be right around 25 goals based on his trajectory the last couple seasons but if that’s the case, he needs to be in the 40+ assists range again. [/hide]