Impressively the Pittsburgh Penguins played perhaps their finest game of the season against the New York Rangers on Sunday. It was a game the Penguins desperately needed to win to prove that they were worthy of being considered a playoff contender. The Rangers, who lead the Atlantic Division, are a quality team and with Sunday’s victory as well as a victories over Philadelphia and Anaheim in the last week have restored confidence in a team that needed something to hang their hat on.

Pittsburgh is now 4-4 in their last eight but 3-1 in their last four and scratching their way back into the playoff hunt.

Marc-Andre Fleury earned a shutout stopping all 33 shots the Rangers got on net and Crosby returned to the lineup after sitting out one game with an injury. With goals from role-players like Minard (1) and Kennedy (8) and also a marker from Sykora (17) the Penguins earned, truly earned, a victory. The players called up from Wilkes-Barres Scranton filled their rolls well and if they can keep playing with the intensity of Sunday’s game, it will lead to some tough decisions to be made as injured players become healthy over the next couple weeks.

The win moves their record to 23-20-4 (50 points) and leapfrogs them over Florida for the 8th playoff spot in the East. To hold onto that spot they will likely need to win against Carolina (21-20-5, 47 pts) on Tuesday. The game against the Hurricanes will be the last before the All-Star Break.

The Mighty Ducks are not exactly a force in the Western Conference but when you consider that the Penguins were down major parts of their team, last night’s 3-1 win against Anaheim was certainly a bright spot. The Penguins took to the ice without Sidney Crosby, Rob Scuderi, forward Max Talbot, Kris Letang and Pascal Dupuis. They are also still missing Fedotenko and Zigomanis as well as Gonchar and also lost Orpik during the game due to an injury.

Things looked bad early on as the makeshift Penguins struggled to find their groove against the Ducks managing a pathetic 5 total shots in the period against Jean-Sebastien Giguere. But the fifth one was all they needed to take a 1-0 lead with only 21 seconds remaining in the period. It was Matt Cooke (6) who wound out from behind the Ducks goal and fed a puck to the far post that banked in with time running out that put the Penguins up heading into the locker room.

Early in the second it was Cooke (7) again who scored just 0:23 seconds in. He found a rebound from Giguere’s pads and with the Ducks netminder badly out of position he slammed it home for a 2-0 lead. The Ducks would cut the lead in half on a second period goal by Getzlaf (17) but the Pens were defensively sound and allowed only 7 shots in the period while amassing 10 themselves; a number that is impressive considering their recent weak totals.

In the third period Pittsburgh got into penalty trouble but was able to hold off a hard charging Ducks team determined to win. At 15:05 of the final period Hal Gill (1) scored his first goal of the season to make the game 3-1. Gill shot the puck from the circle and it found the back of the net.

Fleury played well, facing only 22 shots in the game to earn the victory.

The win moved the Penguins back into a playoff spot (8th to be exact) and they have won two of their last three and could have easily won the Washington game with a little commitment to defense. I am still not ready to say that the team has come out of its recent long and painful funk but things are certainly looking up. The question will be can they play hard enough to win games while the injury bug continues to decimate their team.