No one ever lost a puck-bucket of sleep over the arcane yet enduring fact that nobody’s won the Stanley Cup twice in a row for 19 years, yet it seemed monstrously important Thursday night, when after 25 extra minutes of delirious sudden death hockey, the Penguins roared into position to do that very thing.
No one goes around reeling off the names of the 1998 Detroit Red Wings — Yzerman, Draper, Kozlov, Lidstrom, McCarty, Shanahan … OK, almost no one — the last NHL house of royalty to actually get it done, but when the 2017 Pittsburgh Penguins kicked aside the Ottawa Senators, 3-2, in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final, coach Mike Sullivan’s defending Stanley Cup champions could taste something very, very special.