Oct 18, 2025 By Rick Shrum 4 min read

Dave Molinari has witnessed the Pittsburgh hockey club hoisting the Stanley Cup five times and chronicled their championship experiences in frenzied fashion – crafting and filing a news article within a half-hour of the team’s ascents to the pinnacle.

Now, for a 43rd season, he is covering the team, this time for the online outlet Substack after decades of writing about the team for the old Pittsburgh Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and other news outlets. A sportswriter since the late 1970s, he began covering the Pens while working for the Press.

His expertise is so storied that in 2009, the Professional Hockey Writers Association bestowed him the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award, given to a print journalist annually “to recognize distinguished members of the newspaper profession whose words have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.”

The award is named after Canadian sports journalist Elmer Ferguson and is housed at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Molinari’s expertise also recently captured the attention of Reedy Press of St. Louis. Molinari said the publisher called him about a year ago and asked whether he was interested in pursuing a book about the Pens. “I said, ‘I’ll do it. I need the money,'” he said with a smile.

This month, Reedy published Molinari’s hard-cover, 176-page book, “The Pittsburgh Penguins: An Illustrated Timeline.”

During his tenure on the beat, Molinari, a Mt. Lebanon resident and Penn State graduate, has learned to appreciate the opening line of another book, the classic “A Tale of Two Cities” – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

The line epitomizes a significant part of the Penguins’ 58-year history. The team occasionally has been the scourge of the National Hockey League, but there have been long stretches when it has had a dickens of a time competing.

“They had quite a hole to dig out of,” Molinari said of a franchise that was formed in 1967 via league expansion and which mostly struggled during its first two decades. During that desultory period, Molinari said in an interview, “they had a bankruptcy and one of the classic collapses in playoff history (losing a 1975 series to the New York Islanders after being up three games to none).

“It was clear it would be a long time, if ever, that they would be successful.”

The successes eventually came, however, thanks to an influx of gifted players and front-office moves. The team hired two well-regarded hockey men for the front office, Bob Johnson as coach and Scotty Bowman as director of player development, who helped to reverse the fortunes of a team by 180 degrees.

The Penguins won their first divisional title and initial Cup in 1991, under the direction of Badger Bob and Bowman. Three superstars led them on the ice: forwards Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr, and goaltender Tom Barrasso. Pittsburgh would repeat as titlist a year later.

“I didn’t think the team would win the Stanley Cup because they hadn’t won a thing before,” Molinari said. “I didn’t expect anything more grandiose than a playoff appearance. You could see they had potential, and that if everything broke right, they could win a few rounds.”

Their drafting of Lemieux in 1984 was pivotal. By finishing a pathetic 16-58-6 (38 points), the Penguins had the first overall draft selection and went for the multi-talented forward who would prove to be a generational player.

“That was the worst season in team history – or best, considering how things worked out in the big picture,” Molinari said. He added, point blank, “They had a bad team and made an effort to be worse.”

The Penguins also won championships in 2009, 2016 and 2017. “The Penguins were very good in the back-to-back seasons,” Molinari said. “And they had the personnel in 2018, but probably were worn down.”

Their formidable run continued, though. The Penguins would qualify for the playoffs an astounding 16 seasons in a row (2007 to 2022), but failed to reach the postseason the past three springs.

During this decline, “there has been a heavy reliance on an aging core of three players who are all in their late 30s,” Molinari said, referring to Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. “It’s unusual for any player to still be in the league at that age.”

Of the trio, Crosby is the only one still playing near his peak.

Another factor, Molinari said, is that “for many years the team has traded draft picks to supplement the team in the playoffs. They’ve done a good job rebuilding, but it may be a few years before it pays off.”

If so, the best of times could return.