Do you think if they are given the time to get used to each other, as well as finding the right linemate, that moving Evgeni Malkin to Sidney Crosby’s wing could be the best thing for both players in the long run? We saw what Crosby could do with such a talented linemate in Marian Hossa, and Malkin obviously needs a good supporting cast to put up the numbers he’s capable of. We’ve seen duos in the past be unstoppable (Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr, anybody?) and great players like to play with great players. With the team’s best interest coming first, could this be a win-win situation?

Adam Smith, Nitro, W. Va.

Q: I don’t get it. Sidney Crosby hasn’t gotten much criticism over this meltdown (in the 2010 playoffs). He gets lauded about being a “big-game player” My question is, in what big game has Sidney Crosby EVER stepped up for the Pens? His two biggest games so far in his career he has been scoreless. Game 7 in the Cup final last summer and, of course, (Game 7 against Montreal). As bad as he was in this Montreal series, his point totals actually doubled his output during the Stanley Cup final last year. Both those series make his two-goal and six-point effort during the 2008 final look like Mario Lemieux-type numbers. He’s still a young guy with many years ahead of him. Hopefully, he is the reason the Penguins hoist the Cup again someday instead of winning in spite of him like last year, but right now he is vastly over-hyped and overrated when people mention him in the same breath as Mario Lemieux.

Chris Robinson, Surprise, Ariz.

MOLINARI: Crosby should not be immune to criticism any more than any other player, and just about everyone associated with the Penguins, including Crosby, can be assigned some degree of culpability for their second-round loss to Montreal.

But perhaps the best way to respond to your questions would be with a few other questions. Like, does it matter that Crosby missed much of Game 7 in 2009 against the Red Wings because of a knee injury, and that not even Lemieux could score from the bench? Why was Game 7 in the second round against the Canadiens more important than Game 7 in the second round against Washington in 2009, when Crosby had two goals and an assist in the Penguins’ 6-2 victory at the Verizon Center? Does it matter that virtually every opponent focuses its defensive efforts on containing Crosby, which makes it easier for teammates who play on other lines to put up points?

No one wanted to predict who would win the major trophies before the NHL Awards gala, and it turns out there was good reason.

Things got spread around at the NHL awards show Wednesday at the Palms Casino Resort, and not only between the league’s poster boys — Penguins center Sidney Crosby and Washington left winger Alex Ovechkin. This time, Vancouver center Henrik Sedin joined the party.

Sedin won his first Hart Trophy as MVP of the NHL as voted by the Professional Hockey Writers Association, and Ovechkin won the Ted Lindsay Award for outstanding player as voted by the league players.

Crosby was not shut out. He won the Mark Messier Leadership Award overseen by the Hall of Famer, was recognized for sharing the Maurice Richard Trophy with Steven Stamkos as the top goal-scorers with 51 each and was named the second-team center behind Sedin on the postseason All-Star teams.

Several people wanted to know what Sidney Crosby thought on his initial trip to this flashy Sin City.

“First impressions? Hot. Really hot,” Crosby said Tuesday at a gathering of NHL award nominees and reporters at the Palms Casino Resort, site of the league gala Wednesday night.

The Penguins’ star center meant the temperature, of course, which hovered around the triple-digit mark, not the sizzling nightlife. When it is time for the NHL season’s-end trophies to be dished out, nominees check their competitive juices at the door. No one goes near the area of self-promotion.

Crosby is a finalist for the Hart Trophy as league MVP, the Ted Lindsay Award as the players’ choice for top player and the Mark Messier Leadership Award. He also could be named to a postseason all-star team, and will accept the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy as the top goal-scorer for 2010-11 — something he shares with the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Steven Stamkos after each netted 51 goals.

Told that fellow Hart and Lindsay finalist Henrik Sedin of the Vancouver Canucks said he did not stand a chance against Crosby and the Washington Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin, Crosby fell in line.

The one bright side to losing in the second round for Penguins center Sidney Crosby was a longer offseason after two consecutive trips to the Stanley Cup final, a summer of celebration when the team won last season and a trip to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics, where he scored the gold-medal winning goal.

“I’ve just tried to rest,” said Crosby, in Las Vegas for the NHL awards tonight. “The last two years have been a lot of hockey.”

He said he has spent time fishing and golfing and now is training again.

Q: What’s the status of Jarome Iginla? Imagine the possibilities with him and Sidney Crosby. When Iginla was asked what would happen if the Flames wanted to move him, he said this: “If they don’t want me here and they want to move in a direction or rebuild or believed they could do better, I would look at it. Absolutely.”

Patti Jorash, Holliston, Mass.

MOLINARI: Iginla, who will be 33 next season, is coming off a 32-goal, 37-assist season in Calgary, and has three seasons left on a contract that carries a salary-cap hit of $7 million.

His game is a superb blend of physicality and finesse, his intangibles are exceptional and playing alongside players whose skill level matches, or exceeds, his own tends to bring out the best in him. Suffice to say, if the Flames decide to entertain trade offers for him — and that would be an epic move by that organization, because he’s been the cornerstone of the franchise for years — Iginla is not the kind of guy you’re going to pick up for a half-baked prospect and a conditional sixth-round draft choice.

Whether the Penguins would be willing (or even able) to pay what surely would be a staggering asking price is hard to say, and whether they’d be able to fit his contract under the salary-cap ceiling without making profound changes to their own roster is questionable, at best.

There seems to be little reason to fear that Iginla is closing in on the end of his career and there probably isn’t a team in the league that wouldn’t like to have him, but for the reasons mentioned above, it’s pretty tough to concoct a realistic scenario under which he would end up with the Penguins.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10139/1059054-125.stm#ixzz0oNpnFE00

There were theories banging around about the Penguins most of the season.

They had a Stanley Cup hangover after winning it last year. Or maybe they were spent after advancing to the final two years in a row, especially for the five Olympians who went to Vancouver in February.

Perhaps, there is some merit to those notions. Center Evgeni Malkin, one of the Olympians, is buying it.

“Yeah, because every year is a long season,” he said Friday. “We see Detroit in the same situation. They’re tired, too, and lost in the second round.”

The Red Wings were the Penguins’ opponent the past two finals and also had Olympians.

“Every year, it’s a little bit tougher after two years of playing in the final, and [some] going to the Olympic Games,” Malkin said.

Center and team captain Sidney Crosby, another Olympian, hesitated when asked how he felt going into the offseason.

“OK,” he said. “Pretty good considering the amount of hockey we’ve played the last few years. It’s been a lot. If anything, you don’t like losing or being out, but, at the same time, to get a full summer in, that’s something that I haven’t had in a long time. Right now, I’m looking forward just to trying to make the most of it and healing and trying to gain as much as I can in the upcoming months before next season.”

There is little doubt Sidney Crosby would like to be preparing for the Eastern Conference final rather than being two days into the offseason after the Penguins were eliminated Wednesday by Montreal in Game 7 of their second-round playoff series.

Still, when Team Canada invited him Thursday to suit up for the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championships in Germany as an injury replacement, Crosby declined.

Since the start of the 2007-08 season, Crosby, 22, has played in 268 NHL regular-season and playoff games and seven Olympic games. That’s in addition to preseason games, Stanley Cup festivities with the Penguins, a two-day personal Stanley Cup celebration and a Canadian Olympic orientation camp.

Pat Brisson, Crosby’s agent, said by text that “at this time and after a long 24 months between [two Stanley Cup] finals and [an Olympic] gold medal, it’s probably more appropriate to relax and recharge.”

Montreal has been the surprise of the NHL playoffs. So much so that Sidney Crosby was left to wonder if that was the Canadiens’ dust his Penguins club got left in or the remnants of some smoke and mirrors.

The Penguins outshot Montreal, 224-173, won the two games in which the Canadiens had more shots, outhit Montreal, 194-153, won 54 percent of the faceoffs between the teams, played a much more offense-oriented style — and still fell in seven games to the upstart Canadiens in a close Eastern Conference semifinal series.

Crosby, the Penguins’ leading scorer and captain, made it clear after a 5-2 loss in Game 7 Wednesday that he is not sold on Montreal’s methods but had to respect the results.

“I don’t [know of] many teams that go out there with the intention to get out-chanced [by a ratio of], 2-1, every game and try to hang around every game,” Crosby said. “I’ve never heard of that.

“But they found ways. You have to give them credit for that. They found ways. They capitalized on their chances. They’re finding ways right now. They’re staying close. Their goalie [Jaroslav Halak] made some big saves, even [in Game 7] when we had a four-goal deficit.

The Penguins will be moving en masse from Mellon Arena across the street to sparkling Consol Energy Center for the start of next season.

The team’s highest-profile player also will be making a move on his own. Or, to be more precise, out on his own.

Center and captain Sidney Crosby has bought a home in the Pittsburgh area after a few years of looking for the right place. He has not yet occupied it.

Since he arrived in Pittsburgh as a rookie shortly after his 18th birthday for the start of 2005-06, Crosby, now 22, has lived during the season with the family of Mario Lemieux, the Penguins’ Hall of Fame center and now co-owner. Crosby’s new house is not far from the Lemieux home.

Sidney Crosby, who for the first time in his career talked a better postseason series than he played, spoke a monstrous, clairvoyant, eloquent truth the day before Game 7, the day before the last day in the life of the Mellon Arena.

“You see what your team is made of [in this situation]; it’s a big challenge,” the captain said.

True enough, but a soft truth at that.

Here’s the hard truth.

“The team that finds a way,” Crosby said, “is going to deserve it.”

Amen kids. Amen.

Look hard at these Montreal Canadiens, the 2009-10 edition perhaps not as elegant, not as quasi-mythic as the legacy of great hockey craftsmen who sculpted the singularly successful crest of the bleu, blanc et rouge.

Missing their best defenseman and perhaps three of their top five, scrambling to earn the last playoff berth in the Eastern Conference, lumbering through those final 12 regular-season games without a single goal from Michael Cammalleri, and matched first against a scoring machine called the Washington Capitals with a goaltender taken about 999th in the 2004 entry draft, one Jaroslav Halak, the Savin’ Slovak.

An interesting bookend, you could call it, once you get past the abruptness of the ending.

Montreal was the Penguins’ first opponent at Mellon Arena. That was a 2-1 Canadiens win Oct. 11, 1967, after the Penguins were one of six expansion teams to join the NHL that season.

Montreal was a storied Original Six club, still known as the Flying Frenchmen.

“I had asked the league to schedule the Canadiens for a purpose — I thought they might have an off night playing an expansion team,” Jack Riley, the original general manager of the Penguins, recalled last month when the team celebrated the final regular-season game at Mellon Arena.

Wednesday night, more than 42 years later, Montreal was back at Mellon Arena for Game 7 of a second-round playoff series against the Penguins. The Canadiens, eighth seed in the Eastern Conference, won Game 7, 5-2, to eliminate the defending Stanley Cup champions — and become the Penguins’ last opponent at Mellon Arena.

Next season, the Penguins will move across the street to the sparkling Consol Energy Center. The fate of Mellon Arena remains undetermined.

Memories of Mellon Arena were difficult for the Penguins to come up with in the quiet moments after their season ended, but they came away with a lasting impression of the fans on this last night.

It is the kind of defeat the Penguins had not suffered in nearly two years.

The kind that leaves emotions raw and exposed.

Eyes, moist and red.

Dreams, dead and buried.

The kind that ends a season.

Montreal beat them, 5-2, in Game 7 of the second round Wednesday night at Mellon Arena, snuffing the Penguins’ chances of winning a second consecutive Stanley Cup before their run at another title had built momentum.

The game also was the Penguins’ final one at Mellon Arena, where their inaugural game was a 2-1 loss to the Canadiens Oct. 11, 1967.

The victory was the second in a row in a seventh game on the road this spring for the Canadiens, who upset Washington in Round 1 and will face the survivor of the Boston-Philadelphia series in the Eastern Conference final.

Leaning on experience

Just because the Penguins bucked the odds and won two Game 7s on the road last year does not mean they will have a false sense of security tonight.

“You try to prepare using those experiences,” Penguins center Sidney Crosby said. “At the end of the day, you have to go out there and play. Just because you’ve done it before doesn’t mean it’s automatic. The only thing those experiences help you with is that trust. As a team, that’s so important to have that trust. I believe we have it. We have to have our best game [tonight]. We’ll leave it all out there and see what it gets us.”

Crosby and his teammates insist they are not surprised that the eighth-seeded Canadiens have pushed them to seven games.

“I don’t think anyone expected anything to be easy or took anything for granted,” Crosby said.

“This is a good opportunity, a challenge for us. When you get to this opportunity, this is where you see where you’re made of. You don’t get this far without going through challenges, and this is another one.”