Molinari: Road Map to Penguins’ Future is in Their Past (+)

The Pittsburgh Penguins are plunging into hockey’s version of a dystopian hellscape, a nether world in which there is little but despair until the merciful release granted by the expiration of the regular season.

And while their predicament doesn’t quite qualify as Orwellian — as in “1984,” George Orwell’s celebrated novel that warned of the perils of totalitarianism — the blueprint for how the Penguins should navigate the final few months of the 2024-25 can, in fact, be found in 1984.

Not the book.

The year.

The one that proved to be the most pivotal in franchise history.

That, after all, is when the Penguins managed to hurl themselves from a place deep in the overall standings to the one at the very bottom.