On Sunday night in Pittsburgh, the Penguins celebrated the 10th anniversary of their 2009 Stanley Cup team.
It was the first of the Stanley Cups won by the Sidney Crosby-Evgeni Malkin-Kris Letang Fleury generation of Penguins and a thrilling one given the opponent, the way the season had gone (a slow start, an in-season coaching change, overcoming a pair of 2-0 series deficits in the playoffs) and what happened the year before against that same Detroit Red Wings team.
It was also the positive result of the dark rebuild between 2001 and 2005 when the team was stripped down to a skeleton, wasn’t exactly on solid financial footing, and for a significant part of that wasn’t guaranteed to remain in Pittsburgh.