And so the talent-laden Pittsburgh Penguins begin a journey that history insists cannot be completed.

Taking in the familiar sounds and smells of the Penguins' dressing room -- having been on hand for each of their 25 postseason games since the end of the lockout -- there's a distinct impression we are at the crossroads of evolution and reality.

Paging Dr. Charles Darwin ... please report to Bill Guerin's dressing-room stall.

And if the noted evolution expert was around for Game 1 of the Penguins' opening playoff series against cross-state rival Philadelphia on Wednesday night, we would confront him with the following conundrum.

The Penguins seem to be the poster team for constant, positive evolution, moving emphatically from laughingstock to surprise playoff team to Stanley Cup finalist, all in the space of three seasons.

You can almost see this team moving from ape to human before your very eyes. So does it not stand to reason this should be the spring of a Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh, the moment when a Penguins team that boasts two of the top three point-getters in the NHL, and a battle-hardened group that has hit the postseason on a torrid 18-3-4 run, stands fully upright?

Well, doesn't it?

Yet, look at the history of teams that have been where the Penguins are, and you see it is almost never so. Since 1967, when the NHL expanded from the Original Six era, just one team (the Edmonton Oilers in 1983 and 1984) has lost in the Stanley Cup finals one year and won the Cup the next spring. One team in more than 40 years.

Recent history suggests it's not even a matter of returning from a Cup finals series loss to win a championship, but rather being embarrassed the following season. Edmonton hasn't made the playoffs since going to the Stanley Cup finals in 2006, Ottawa was swept by these same Penguins last spring after going to the 2007 finals and Calgary, losers in the 2004 Cup finals, haven't won a playoff series since.

"You just don't know. It's just so unpredictable," offered Penguins forward Chris Kunitz, who was a member of the 2007 championship Ducks team and was dealt from Anaheim to Pittsburgh before this year's trade deadline.

There are lots of potential factors, including fatigue, both emotional and physical. You spend everything to win the Cup. Imagine when you spend everything, come away with zero at the end, and then have to try to do it all again the next season, only do it one better.

It appears easier to win one Cup than it does to win a second one, creating a kind of de-evolution, if you will. Dallas won a Cup in 1999 and then lost in the finals the next season to New Jersey. The Devils returned to the finals the next year in 2001, but were denied by Ray Bourque and the Colorado Avalanche.

Penguins coach Dan Bylsma played in 11 playoff games for Anaheim in 2003, when it lost in seven games to the New Jersey Devils. He thinks fatigue is an overrated reason for teams failing to take that next, giant step.

Competition, now that's something he can buy.

"I think it has mostly to do with the quality of teams," Bylsma said. "It's hard to get there and you need a lot of things to happen, and just being a good team does not guarantee you the fact that you're going to get even back to the semifinals. There's a lot of good teams out there. It's tough."

Maybe it's not a science thing at all, then; maybe it's a mental thing, the notion that you can somehow think your way to that next level. If so, it would seem the key is in not to assume that playoff success breeds success.

"I think you take the experience side of getting there, but I don't think you take anything else," Kunitz said.

In short, take nothing for granted, not even evolution.

"It's not your right to go back just because you were there before and lost," said Bill Guerin, whose perspective on this cannot be denied. He won a Cup in New Jersey in 1995 and the Devils missed the playoffs the next season. "We just couldn't get it together."

Guerin insisted no one in the Penguins' locker room is assuming anything based on last season's playoff run. "No one in this room is thinking because we went last year, it's an automatic that we're going back," he said.

So, what of the Oilers, the one team that managed to chart the course the Penguins now hope to travel? See, that's where it gets interesting. Edmonton was swept by the New York Islanders in 1983, its first trip to the Stanley Cup finals.

The following spring, Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, et al, galvanized by the humbling experience, came back and defeated those same Islanders in five games to end New York's four-year championship run and set up their own run of five Cups in seven seasons.

What makes this story so timely is, a year ago, when the Penguins were running roughshod over their Eastern Conference foes in advancing to the team's first Cup finals since 1992, many saw in them the same dynamic that existed with the earlier Oilers team.

Starting Wednesday night, we're going to see if that's a piece of history the Pens can grab onto and whether they can make a case for the ultimate in hockey evolution.

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