The Pittsburgh Penguins (colloquially known as the Pens) are a professional ice hockey team based in Pittsburgh. The Penguins compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division of the Eastern Conference, and have played their home games at PPG Paints Arena, originally known as Consol Energy Center, since 2010. The team previously played at the Civic Arena, which was also known as Mellon Arena from 1999 to 2010, and by its nickname “the Igloo”. The Penguins are affiliated with two minor league teams – the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins of the American Hockey League (AHL) and the Wheeling Nailers of the ECHL.

Founded during the 1967 expansion, the Penguins have qualified for six Stanley Cup Finals, winning the Stanley Cup five times – in 1991, 1992, 2009, 2016, and 2017. Along with the Edmonton Oilers, the Penguins are tied for the most Stanley Cup championships among the non-Original Six teams and sixth overall. With their Stanley Cup wins in 2016 and 2017, the Penguins became the first back-to-back champions in the salary cap era. Several of the team’s former members have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, including co-owner Mario Lemieux, who purchased the Penguins in 1999 and brought the club out of bankruptcy. Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Sidney Crosby, and Evgeni Malkin have won the Hart Memorial Trophy while playing for the franchise.
Team history
Early years (1967–1984)

Prior to the arrival of the Penguins, Pittsburgh had been the home of the NHL’s Pittsburgh Pirates from 1925 to 1930 and of the American Hockey League’s Pittsburgh Hornets franchise from 1936 to 1967 (with a short break from 1956 to 1961). In the spring of 1965, Jack McGregor, a state senator from Kittanning, Pennsylvania, began lobbying campaign contributors and community leaders to bring an NHL franchise back to Pittsburgh. The group focused on leveraging the NHL as an urban renewal tool for Pittsburgh. The senator formed a group of local investors that included H. J. Heinz Company heir H. J. Heinz III, Pittsburgh Steelers’ owner Art Rooney and the Mellon family’s Richard Mellon Scaife. The projected league expansion depended on securing votes from the then-current NHL owners; to ensure Pittsburgh would be selected as one of the expansion cities, McGregor enlisted Rooney to petition votes from James D. Norris, owner of the Chicago Black Hawks and his brother Bruce Norris, owner of the Detroit Red Wings. The effort was successful, and on February 8, 1966, the National Hockey League awarded an expansion team to Pittsburgh for the 1967–68 season. The Penguins paid $2.5 million ($23.8 million today) for their entry and $750,000 ($6.9 million today) more for start-up costs. The Civic Arena’s capacity was boosted from 10,732 to 12,500 to meet the NHL requirements for expansion. The Pens also paid an indemnification bill to settle with the Detroit Red Wings, which owned the Pittsburgh Hornets franchise. The investor group named McGregor president and chief executive officer, and he represented Pittsburgh on the NHL’s Board of Governors.

A contest was held where 700 of 26,000 entries picked “Penguins” as the team’s nickname, sharing its nickname with the athletic department of the newly named Youngstown State University in nearby Youngstown, Ohio. (Youngstown is part of the Penguins’ territorial rights to this day, though they did briefly share them with the Cleveland Barons in the mid-1970s.) Mark Peters had the winning entry (which was inspired because the team was to play in the “Igloo”, the nickname of the Pittsburgh Civic Arena),[7][8] a logo was chosen that had a penguin in front of a triangle, which symbolized the “Golden Triangle” of downtown Pittsburgh.[7][9] The Penguins’ first general manager, Jack Riley, opened the first pre-season camp for the franchise in Brantford, Ontario,[10] on September 13, 1967, playing the franchise’s first exhibition match in Brantford against the Philadelphia Flyers on September 23, 1967. Restrictive rules which kept most major talent with the existing “Original Six” teams hampered the Pens, along with the rest of the expansion teams. Beyond aging sniper Andy Bathgate, all-star defenseman Leo Boivin (who had begun his professional career with the Hornets) and New York Rangers’ veteran Earl Ingarfield, a cast of former minor leaguers largely manned the first Penguins’ team. Several players played for the Hornets the previous season: Bathgate, wingers Val Fonteyne and Ab McDonald, and goaltenders Hank Bassen and Joe Daley. George Sullivan was named the head coach for the club’s first two seasons, and McDonald was named the team’s first captain.[11]

On October 11, 1967, league president Clarence Campbell and McGregor jointly dropped the ceremonial first puck of the Penguins’ opening home game against the Montreal Canadiens.[5] On October 21, 1967, they became the first team from the expansion class to defeat an Original Six team, as they defeated the Chicago Black Hawks 4–2. However, the Penguins went 27–34–13 and finished in fifth place in the West Division, missing the playoffs and ending with the third-worst record in the league. The team’s best player proved to be longtime Cleveland Barons AHL goaltender Les Binkley, who recorded a 2.88 goals-against average and was second in the league with six shutouts. Defensive winger Ken Schinkel won the team’s sole league honor, being named to represent the Penguins in the NHL All-Star Game. Bathgate led the team in scoring with 59 points but retired at season’s end. McDonald, who led the team in goals and was second in team scoring, was also gone at season’s end, traded to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for center Lou Angotti.

Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Penguins