Over the next few posts I'm going to look at the Penguins 1980 Preliminary Round battle with the Boston Bruins, which turned out to be anything but what most fans expected it to be: a quick Bruin whitewashing.
This article from the April 7, 1980 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, written on the eve of the series opener, looks at the state of the Igloo-dwellers at the end of a disappointing regular season that saw them finish seven games below the .500 mark. The team could hardly have felt great about itself after finishing the campaign with a 9-1 abomination at home against the Buffalo Sabres.
Add in the fact that the Big Bad Bruins had: a) finished a whopping 32 points better than the Pens; b) swept Pittsburgh four-straight in the playoffs the year before; and c) had gone deep into the playoffs the previous two seasons (Finals and Semi-Finals), and the Penguins' fate seemed sealed.
But, as all sports fans know, anything can happen. And something close to "anything" was about to...
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