Pens Preview - Forwards

The season starts tomorrow night in New Jersey against the Scott-less Devils (as in, no Stevens or Nedermeyer). I'm going to look at the forwards, defense and goalies briefly in a few posts today and tomorrow.

First the forwards -

First Line
John LeClair-Sidney Crosby-Mark Recchi

Second Line
Ryan Malone-Mario Lemieux-Ziggy Palffy

Third Line
Matt Murley-Lasse Pirjeta-Konstantin Koltsov

Fourth Line
Rico Fata-Maxime Talbot-Ryan VandenBussche

Andre Roy is suspended for two games for the brainiac move of doing the throat slash gesture on the ice.

As a point of comparison, here are some of the forwards that were on the team at the end of the 03-04 season, when they won 15 of the last 20 games (not sure exactly how many were still on the club at the end):
Morozov
Malone
Kraft
Fata
Koltsov
Surovy
Kostopoulos
Holzinger
Eastwood
Bradley
Meloche
Murley

Of those names, there are 4 on the big club roster this year - Malone, Koltsov, Murley and Fata. Can't say I'm going to miss any of the others either, other than Morozov and Surovy (he always seemed to have a scoring knack...)