{"id":477253,"date":"2026-02-28T15:40:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T15:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/477253\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T15:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T15:40:13","slug":"penguins-start-weekend-of-back-to-back-games-against-rocky-rangers-wpxi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/477253\/","title":{"rendered":"Penguins start weekend of back-to-back games against rocky Rangers \u2013 WPXI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">NEW YORK CITY \u2014 This article originally appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/\">PGHHockeyNOW.com.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The late February game between the Pittsburgh Penguins (30-15-12) and the New York Rangers (22-29-7) was indeed supposed to be a battle between a playoff contender and a team entering a rebuild. And it will be, but the roles are reversed as the win-now Rangers are on the rocks as they host the second-place Penguins at Madison Square Garden Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">It\u2019s an early game. The puck drops after 12:30, though it is a national TV game, so beware a longer pregame show and later start.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The Penguins have a three-point lead on the Washington Capitals as the first team out of the playoff picture, but the Penguins have a whopping four games in hand. The other threat, the Columbus Blue Jackets, trails the Penguins by seven points.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The Penguins have back-to-back games this weekend, so both goalies will get a start. Coach Dan Muse\u2019s choice will be telling because the No. 1 goalie generally plays the first of the two games. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/pittsburgh-penguins-game-58-rags-riches-goalies-notes-how-to-watch-vs-nyr\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/pittsburgh-penguins-game-58-rags-riches-goalies-notes-how-to-watch-vs-nyr\/\">Click here to read more from PGHHockeyNOW.com.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Download the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/mobile-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FREE WPXI News app<\/a> for breaking news alerts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Follow Channel 11 News on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/wpxi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WPXI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>. | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/video\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch WPXI NOW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>TOP STORIES FROM CHANNEL 11 NEWS <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph body-copyright\">\u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK CITY \u2014 This article originally appeared on PGHHockeyNOW.com. The late February game between the Pittsburgh Penguins&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5113],"tags":[5,35,4,2976,118,6634,40866,53857,38597,1469,100,5216,182,36],"class_list":["post-477253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-hockey","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-playoff-picture","tag-penguins","tag-penguins-game","tag-penguins-game-time","tag-penguins-rangers","tag-penguins-standings","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-pittsburghpenguins","tag-playoffs","tag-rangers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}