(Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

With the hiring of new coach Dan Bylsma, the Pittsburgh Penguins have picked up the slack and have played with intensity and fire. With the Penguins continuing to win, I got very excited for a simple reason.

As a birthday present, I got to go to see the Penguins play the Los Angeles Kings Friday at Mellon Arena. I usually get to go to one Penguins game a year, and the Penguins have never lost a game when I show up (somebody get me season tickets). So with that said, I guaranteed a Penguins victory and headed off to the arena.

My seats were fairly high, as I sat in F28 but I had row A seats four and 5five. It seemed sort of secluded from the other seats and a five seat row which made it easier to move around.

While their wasn't that much room, I felt like a VIP, and also felt that my right knee cap (which had been affected by tendinitis for 10 weeks and will continue to have it for another month and a half) had something to rest on.

Before I got to my seat, we took a front row look at shoot around and it was really cool, and pounding the glass made me feel like a kid in a candy shop. After that, we got to our seat with 20 minutes to spare. I chatted with my seat neighbors and soon enough the game was under way.

I was certain the the Penguins would win, as the Kings are not that good and their best player statistically, Anze Kopitar had 60 points. The main person I was worried about on their team was No. 23 Dustin Brown.

Brown is very comparable to Chris Kunitz (who plays for the Penguins). While Kunitz is a little more noticeable offensively, Brown leads the National Hockey League (NHL) in hits so I certainly expected fireworks from him.

 The Penguins seemed to dictate play despite being short-handed early in the period. My thoughts were confirmed when on the Penguins first power play of the game, Sidney Crosby took a back hand against Kings goalie Jonathan Quick and scored making it 1-0 Penguins.

The place went nuts and I more than joined in the cheering. A few minutes later, the place went nuts again, as Evgeni Malkin scored on a nice pass from Crosby. He had a wide open net, and soon chants of "MVP" followed. The Penguins had a 2-0 lead after the first period.

In the second period, the Penguins added two goals, one from Tyler Kennedy and another from Bill Guerin to get a 4-0 lead, a lead they kept at period's end. I then decided to leave my seat and walk around the arena.

My main mission was to buy a media guide, but just like the year before, I got lost. I walked around and found the steps for F which said that F28 was the way I was going, but the stairs only led me to F11-F20. I fell for this twice, and when I finally got back in my seat, I had missed 3 seconds of the period.

The third period confirmed my previous thoughts on Brown. Brown had a couple of tenacious hits within a little less than a minute of each other and I knew that I had properly done my homework. The Kings got another power play, and the Penguins had handled short-handed situations well but this time was different.

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