Molinari: Penguins’ Season All But Over. How Much Should They Care? (+)

CRANBERRY – The Pittsburgh Penguins have 22 games remaining in the regular season, beginning with Philadelphia’s visit to PPG Paints Arena Thursday evening.

It’s safe to assume that they’ll field a team for every one of them.

What those 22 lineups will look like – especially the ones after the NHL trade deadline next Friday at 3 p.m. – is far less certain.

Mathematically, the Penguins still have a chance to get into the Stanley Cup playoffs this spring. Of course, they’d actually have better odds of scaling the sheer face of El Capitan while wearing roller skates than of climbing into an Eastern Conference wild-card spot by mid-April.