PITTSBURGH — Sidney Crosby surprised some Pittsburgh Penguins fans last week by knocking on their front door and handing them their season tickets.

Quite the delivery man, the NHL's reigning scoring champion and most valuable player.

Now that he's the Penguins' captain at the grizzled age of 20, Crosby wouldn't mind being on the receiving end of a handout himself next June. Namely, when the Stanley Cup trophy is presented to the NHL champion.

"Certainly, our confidence is there," Crosby said Thursday as the Penguins opened tamp, five months following their first-round playoff elimination by Ottawa.

A year ago, a realistic goal for the Penguins when camp started was a winning season. They did a lot better than that, with a 47-point turnaround from the season before, fourth best in NHL history.

Not only did the Penguins make the playoffs, their 47 victories were the second most in club history. Nobody would have expected that after they failed to win more than 28 games in any of the previous four seasons, even when Crosby scored 102 points as a rookie in 2005-06.

Now, a realistic goal is the Stanley Cup, and the Penguins are one of the popular picks in the preseason. They've added two proven former Cup winners, defenseman Darryl Sydor and forward Petr Sykora, to one of the best collections of young scoring talent (Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jordan Staal) in NHL history.

Crosby understands a lot more is expected of these Penguins, even if it might not be until the playoffs.

"There's expectations, whether it's individually or as a team," he said. "But if you look back to last year, our focus was getting off to a good start and proving ourselves as a young team. It's only a year's difference and we have to keep doing that."