Game 1- New York Rangers @ Penguins

Everything begins anew for the Penguins at 7:38 on Friday night when the puck drops on the new season at Mellon Arena. The New York Rangers, complete with a projected 10 new faces from last season, will be in town and take a go at putting a damper on the evening's banner-raising spectacle and subsequent hockey game.

Half the fun of this one comes in the pregame. The Penguins will have their normal home opener shtick for a little while, which will be accompanied by the raising of last season's Eastern Conference and Stanley Cup championship banners, with the possibility of a designation for another Pittsburgh Art Ross winner, Evgeni Malkin.

As for the game itself, the Rangers should provide a handful for the Pens. Although they've hardly ever won in the Igloo over the last few years, there's been a lot of roster turnover under GM Glen Sather, so it's tough to say how this group of Blueshirts will respond to opening up and what has really been a house of horrors for them.

Free agent signing Marian Gaborik, at least for now, is healthy, and provides a real scoring threat. Rookies center Artem Anisimov and defenseman Mike Del Zotto are two young Rangers who could be pretty entertaining to watch, though hopefully not in this game.

Sidney Crosby is anticipated to be back at close to 100% from a preseason groin ailment. Newly claimed waiver wire pickup Chris Bourque may or may not be in the lineup, but I'd guess the latter since the Rangers will be dressing enforcer Donald Brashear, a trendy counterpart for Pens tough guy Eric Godard over time.

Penguins-

14 Chris Kunitz- 87 Sidney Crosby- 13 Bill Guerin
26 Ruslan Fedotenko- 71 Evgeni Malkin- 9 Pascal Dupuis
24 Matt Cooke- 11 Jordan Staal- 48 Tyler Kennedy
28 Eric Godard- 27 Craig Adams- 17 Michael Rupp

44 Brooks Orpik- 55 Sergei Gonchar
7 Mark Eaton- 58 Kris Letang
3 Alex Goligoski- 74 Jay McKee

29 Marc-Andre Fleury

Rangers-

10 Marian Gaborik- 17 Brandon Dubinsky- 20 Vinny Prospal
21 Chris Higgins- 23 Chris Drury- 24 Ryan Callahan
81 Enver Lisin- 42 Artem Anisimov- 12 Ales Kotalik
87 Donald Brashear- 22 Brian Boyle- 34 Aaron Voros

18 Marc Staal- 6 Wade Redden
33 Michal Rozsival- 97 Matt Gilroy
4 Michael Del Zotto- 5 Dan Girardi

30 Henrik Lundqvist