The Pittsburgh Penguins are an ice hockey team from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and play in the National Hockey League (NHL). The Penguins have been active since 1967, playing at Mellon Arena all those years. Since the 2010-2011 season, the Pens have been playing in the Consol Energy Center that was built especially for them.

Thanks to the success of the Pittsburgh Pirates ice hockey club, which had existed in the 1920s and had been active in the NHL, Pittsburgh, along with five other cities (L.A., St. Louis, Philadelphia, Oakland, and Minneapolis), received the permission of the NHL to start a franchise, doubling the number of NHL participants. Due to the hegemony of the Original Six, the supply of talent for the new teams was very thin and the Pens had to make do with mostly old amateur players. They only employed two players who were already pros: Andy Bathgate and Leo Boivin. Although these are two players who would later be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, they were both in their late 30s in the late 1960s. The Penguins therefore missed the Stanley Cup playoffs five times in the first seven years.