As expected the Pittsburgh Penguins have re-signed Evgeni Malkin to a five-year contract extension, which will commence for the 2009-10 season following the completion of the final year of his current entry level contract.

No official word yet on the financial terms but it’s believed to be in the neighborhood of $8.5 million per season .

So much for the baseless speculation in recent weeks that Malkin didn’t want to play second fiddle to Sidney Crosby or wanted as much money as Alexander Ovechkin.

I realize some folks believe the Penguins should’ve focused on re-signing wingers Marian Hossa and Ryan Malone and shopped Malkin but let’s face it, when you’ve got two of the top young centers in the game and have the opportunity to re-sign them, you do it.

The Penguins are expected to open contract extension talks with another young center, Jordan Staal, later this month.

A lack of scoring wingers is still a problem for Penguins management but that’s something that can be potentially resolved in the coming days or weeks, albeit with more affordable acquisitions.

This move potentially ties up over $17 million in cap space for the Penguins starting in 2009-10, but given the ownership’s new willingness to keep pace with the cap and absorb losses over the next two seasons whilst awaiting the construction of their new arena, that might not be as problematic as it appears.  

The Pittsburgh Penguins, particularly their whiz kids led by Sidney Crosby, learned last season what it took to win in the regular season, and this year, they learned a hard lesson of what it takes to win in the playoffs.

Yes, I predicted the Penguins to upset the Senators. They had such an impressive second half, and despite their average-at-best defensive game, proved on more than one occasion that no lead was safe against them.

Talent and youthful exuberance carried them to respectability this season, but it wasn’t enough to overcome a seasoned team with defensive depth like the Ottawa Senators.

This early post-season exit for the Penguins is disappointing for them and their fans, but it’s only one signpost on the road to greatness for this team.

Crosby proved he could play well in the playoffs, and goalie Marc-Andre Fleury showed he was capable of overcoming a shaky start to a playoff series to cope with the intense pressure a goaltender faces in the post-season.  18-year-old Jordan Staal also gave a good account of himself in his first playoff series. These three will only get better as time goes by.

Other Penguins, like Evgeni Malkin, Ryan Whitney and Colby Armstrong, didn’t fare as well, but after the dust has settled from this series they’ll have learned how to step up their game in the post-season.

Many observers, myself included, compared this year’s young Penguins to the Wayne Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers kiddie corps of the early 1980s.

As one hockey pundit noted, those Oilers didn’t win the Stanley Cup in their first playoff year, so it was obviously unrealistic to expect the Penguins to pull off that feat.

That young Oilers team took four long years of learning sometimes painful lessons in the playoffs, often against more experienced teams, before they finally won the Stanley Cup.

That young Oilers team was also eliminated in the first round of their first playoff series.

Like those Oilers, the Crosby-led Penguins will lick their wounds and take away the necessary information needed to perform better in future playoffs.

They were taught a valuable lesson this year on the kind of defensive game required to win in the playoffs.

It’s a lesson no one on the Penguins, from owner to GM to coach to Crosby to whichever young prospect should join them down the road, will ever forget.

A necessary growing pain.