If Any Team in This Era Is Going to Repeat as Stanley Cup Champs, It's the Penguins

This is part of VICE Sports' 2016 NHL preview coverage. You can read all our stories here.

Stanley Cup champions don't repeat anymore. Blame it on free agency, the salary cap, injuries or plain bad luck in short series—no matter how good a team may look after winning it all one season, the odds are so against it happening again 365 days later that the team and its fans may as well abandon hope right after the parade concludes.

As dominant as the Chicago Blackhawks and Los Angeles Kings have been this decade, not even they could pull it off.

Forget dynasties; back-to-back champions haven't happened in two decades for a reason and you shouldn't expect it to happen now.

Here's why you can expect it to happen now.

The 2016-17 Pittsburgh Penguins are the NHL's best chance at a repeat champion since Lockout Two, the start of the salary-cap era. How do we know that? For one, all champions from 2006-2015 failed to repeat, which leaves the Penguins as the only current champion with a chance at repeating. Airtight semantic logic based entirely on time's linear nature and mathematics aside, consider some of the recent champions.

Twice, in 2010 and 2015, the Blackhawks followed championships by abandoning reliable players for new ones in much the same way regular folks trade in their old iPhones when the new ones come out; asking the old-ass Detroit Red Wings to win the Cup in 2009 after winning it in 2008 was like asking a dude in his late-30s to stay out all night drinking on Friday, then make it through the following Saturday night; the 2011 Boston Bruins were fueled by a 36-year-old goaltender that may currently be hiding in the woods and drenched in deer urine so he can better hide from his potential prey, and the 2013 lockout rendered any repeat hopes pointless, as no one should take 48-game seasons seriously.

The Penguins have nothing like that working against them in 2016-17.

They are returning everyone that mattered from last season except Ben Lovejoy; they are one of the league's older squads, but they're not 2009 Red Wings Old, so they can go hard two seasons in a row; as of now, Matt Murray and Marc-Andre Fleury have no plans to skip the White House visit and abandon society to live in a bunker, and unlike the 2007 Ducks, who relied heavily on a decaying core of Teemu Selanne, Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer, the Penguins can feel confident knowing that of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Phil Kessel, only Malkin has reached age 30.

Of the Penguins' 15 most frequently used forwards last season, only two aren't returning—David Perron and Beau Bennett. Perron was traded mid-season for Carl Hagelin, who is back in the fold this season. So when you get right down to it, the Penguins' biggest forward hole comes from the loss of Bennett, who was 15th among forwards in total ice time at 392 minutes.

On defense, it's more of the same; Lovejoy was fourth in ice time (1,245 total minutes) but mid-season acquisition Justin Schultz is back to fill that gap. Derrick Pouliot got his feet wet in the second half last season and he's there to eat Lovejoy's minutes if necessary.

How does that compare to the 2014 Kings, who many thought could win a third Cup in four years in 2015? They returned a large portion of that team but it's slightly below what the Penguins boast this season.

Willie Mitchell, the Kings' No. 3 defenseman in minutes (1,545), left via free agency and represents a bigger loss than Lovejoy. The situation was similar up front, as the Kings only suffered one loss among their 15 most frequently used forwards—Matt Frattin, who logged 479 minutes before a mid-season trade to Columbus that helped net Marian Gaborik, who was back the following year.

Both the Kings and Penguins essentially returned all of their forward lines but Mitchell meant more to the Kings than Lovejoy did to the Penguins.

Let's face it—there's nothing to stop the Penguins from winning the Cup in 2017.

Here are a few things that can stop the Penguins from winning the Cup in 2017.

• Getting Halak'd—Remember when the Penguins won the Cup in 2009? Remember how they lost in the 2010 playoffs? Jaroslav Halak stood on his head for six weeks and the Penguins were his second-round victim, as he allowed 11 goals over the final six games of that series. You can't predict when a team will get Halak'd or Lehner'd (I'm bullish on the Sabres so get off me) or Price'd or Holtby'd or… you get it.

• Injuries—Remember the 2011 playoffs? Crosby and Malkin were hurt and that was that. You won't believe this, but if a team loses its best players in the playoffs, that team is dead.

• Bad luck—Players can espouse hard work as the difference between winning and losing, but sometimes it's luck. If and when the Penguins play the Capitals and/or Lightning, there won't be much separating the two teams; if the bounces go against the Penguins for two weeks in either case, they'll be doomed.

Not to bury the lede, but the Penguins have something going for them that no other team in the NHL can boast—the best player in the world who is looking more like the best player in the world than he has in recent years.

Crosby dominated in the World Cup with Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron on his line and did so against the likes of the Czech Republic and that monstrosity Team USA barfed onto the ice. No disrespect to Patric Hornqvist or any other winger Mike Sullivan will place with Crosby over the next six months, but it won't get better than Marchand and Bergeron.

But there's no denying how much more productive Crosby has been with Sullivan and should start the season running thanks to meaningless but fast-paced hockey with the best players in the world.

Sullivan has the speedy Penguins playing a speed game and this is a young enough, fast enough team to run teams out of the building from October through June. Will there be lulls and slumps during the regular season? Of course. Will the lines you came to love in the postseason be jumbled before the first month ends? You bet.

As long as the Penguins are motivated and can avoid bad breaks in crucial situations, this is the year we finally get a repeat champion that allows us to have a genuine conversation about a true dynasty in a salary-cap environment.