Let's be serious, the Pens never had a chance to 3peat. They sealed their fate this year when they won the 2nd Cup in a row. Too many games in a short period of time. Add the parity (a good thing, more parity in NHL than any other pro league IMO) and it's damn near impossible to 3 peat. There's a reason why the Pens were the 1st team to win consecutive titles in 20 years. Just too hard on the body. Too many games in a short amount of time.
Look at football for example. Team wins Super Bowl in early February, no training camp until very late July so pretty much like 6 months of recovery. NHL teams win Cup mid-June. Training camp starts back up in September. Only like 2.5 months off, maybe 3 months max. In NFL, you only play 16 games with 1 game per week. In NHL, you play 82 games with sometimes maybe playing 3-4 games in a weekspan with several games being back-to-back days (Pens played most 19, but please remember NHL favors the Pens). The max amount of playoff games needed to win Super Bowl is 4 and most of the time, it's 3 games due to higher seeds like Patriots winning. In the NHL, you can play a maximum of 28 games before you win the Cup. Pens played over 300 games in 3 years. That's absurd. This is why hockey is more physical than football in a season vs season standpoint, IMO. Sure, football may be more violent in a 1 game vs 1 game comparison but hockey is far more physical taxing on the body when you compare Super Bowl run vs Stanley Cup run. Add in 2 Stanley Cup runs and wowzers
No time for the body and mind to fully recover. When your body is worn down, you're more likely to sustain injuries and those injuries will take longer to heal. To win 2 Cups in a row is almost miraculous in itself, 3peating is just too much to ask. It will never happen again. It's another hockey record like Gretzky points that cannot and will not ever be matched.The Pens never really had a chance besides other teams sustaining serious injuries to key players or goalies shitting the bed. That's ok though, I'll happily take the 2 Cups in a row. Best thing for Pens players is getting away from the ice for a few months, let their bodies heal and minds get fresh so they are actually hungry next season instead of being burned out. A few tweaks to the lineup including bolstering the D-corps and this team will make a serious push for 3 Cups in 4 years.