PITTSBURGH -- It's a play they've made so many times together that Sidney Crosby didn't need to see much to know Chris Kunitz wanted the puck. There was brief eye contact, but the way Kunitz was holding his stick signaled he was ready.
Crosby had just retrieved a pass from along the boards and was skating toward Kunitz when he started to raise his stick slightly in anticipation. "He wanted the puck," Crosby said. "He stopped in that area. He wanted to let one rip. I don't know how much he got on it, but he put it in the right spot."
With that pass and shot, the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Ottawa Senators 3-2 in double overtime on Thursday and advanced to the Stanley Cup finals for the second consecutive year. A team that has overcome just about every kind of injury during its defense of the Stanley Cup is now four wins away from a repeat, four wins away from doing something no team in the salary-cap era has done.
The fact that it took seven games in the East finals and double overtime in Game 7 against the resilient Senators fits in with how this postseason has gone for the Penguins. None of it has come easy.
Not the opponents: The Pens faced the Columbus Blue Jackets (fourth-most points in the league) and Washington Capitals (Presidents' Trophy winners) in the first two rounds. Not the breaks: The Pens dealt with more injuries than just about anyone. None of it.
Yet with every win, they inched closer to a repeat -- and the closer they got, their competitive fire burned brighter. This game was the culmination.
"You talk about how difficult it is to get back to the finals two years in a row; when you're seeing all that, you start to see it firsthand," Crosby said. "We just continued to find ways and different guys have stepped up, and we trust in that and believed in that. Whoever has come in the lineup has done a great job. That builds confidence."
Crosby is at the forefront of it all.
No game captured his iron will more in this series than Game 6 in Ottawa. He didn't score a goal or register a point. His team didn't even win, thanks to an incredible performance from Senators goalie Craig Anderson.
But Crosby was the target of constant abuse from the Senators. His eye was gouged. Senators forward Mike Hoffman squirted Crosby with a water bottle from the bench. Crosby was pinned to the ice as the Senators got away with liberties that certainly don't support the theory that suggest he gets special treatment as the best player in the game.
After that game, his father, Troy, told his son how proud he was that he didn't retaliate. Crosby simply kept on pressing. It took another five periods to get the breakthrough, but eventually it happened.
"He took a lot of abuse in Ottawa," Troy Crosby said after his son had helped lead the Penguins to another Stanley Cup finals. "I told him, 'You know what? You played a great game, stayed focused. Keep doing the same thing next game and things will be different.'"
Nailed it.
Crosby and the Penguins are in position to win their third Stanley Cup with this core group of players, with only the talented Nashville Predators as the last hurdle. These Stanley Cup finals are an opportunity for the Penguins to stake their claim as the best team of this era. With four more wins, the Penguins would pull even among recent champions with the Chicago Blackhawks and their three rings under the leadership of captain Jonathan Toews.
But the Blackhawks never went back-to-back.
Sidney Crosby is already as driven a competitor as there is in hockey. Does putting the Penguins above other teams in this era drive him even more?
His dad would only say that he sees a real hunger in his son. He wasn't tipping off what ignites it most.
"He's motivated. He's hungry," Troy Crosby said. "You can tell he's hungry."
Everyone in the building saw it from the start of Game 7. There was an extra jump in Crosby's game, as there was in a number of Penguins. They seize opportunity as well as any group in the game, and they did it once again.
The first emotion that washed over Crosby when Kunitz's shot went in wasn't elation. It was relief. All this effort, doing all the right things with a blind faith that the payoff would eventually come, led to relief.
"It's just one of those games when the stakes are this high, anything can happen, so it's relief," Crosby said.
Relief eventually made way for excitement. The realization set in that the Penguins are playing for another Stanley Cup, their resiliency rewarded with one last opportunity.
"This group of players has a will to win as a group more so than any other group I've been around," said Penguins coach Mike Sullivan. "They understand the opportunity to play this deep and compete for the Stanley Cup doesn't come around every year. And when it does, when a team like ours puts itself in the position like we have, we have to maximize this opportunity."