Playoff season is on the horizon and it's the best time of the year.  Everyone is primed for a great run, the mood is anticipatory with a buzz in the air.

But it's also becoming a time to take a moment and give a little back, if you're in the good position to be able and do so.

Click the "Read more" and let's talk about the Pensburgh Spring '09 charity drive to support the Mario Lemieux Foundation...

First of all, we encourage the Rinkotology brackets designed by the guys over at The Pensblog.  If somehow you haven't seen this, check it out.  You can design a NCAA-basketball style bracket that is smart enough to correctly re-seed the teams in the second round based off of who wins. 

They have a bunch of great prizes lined up for the winners and are on there way to raising well more than their goal of $10,066.  Donations, which are going to the Mario Lemieux Foundation, are not manditory but definitely suggested.

Here at Pensburgh, we have another angle to support the MLF, and this one will be good.

Meet one of my roommates, Eric.  He's in his mid-20s and claims to have been growing beards for the better part of a decade.  Most of the time Eric has a nice beard going on, he's too lazy to shave.  But Eric has dedicated himself to grow it out as long as the Pens are in.  The picture on the site was taken just a little earlier, and while it might not show much promise yet, I guarantee it'll get there.

So here's the what we propose..

Frank came up with a great idea, let's donate the jersey number in cents of every Penguins goal scorer this playoffs.  So, for instance, if the Penguins win a game 4-2 with goals from Evgeni Malkin, Sergei Gonchar, Jordan Staal and Sidney Crosby  you would donate $0.71 + $0.55 + $0.11 + $0.87, or $2.24 total.

The website is setup that you can donate set amounts (minimum of $10).  So the idea being that we donate $10 or $20 at first and then Pensburgh will keep track of what your balance is.  So if the Penguins score $2.24 of goals, your balance would be $7.76, if you donated $10.00 to start.

Is it kind of complicated, yeah, a little bit.  But here at Pensburgh we'll do the legwork to help you keep it up.  We think it'll be a fun way to root on the Penguins and donate to a very worthy cause.

Plus, there's more

When the playoff run is over (hopefully following a parade in June) Eric has agreed to shave whatever the donators to his cause want.  Wicked chops, crazy moustache, fumanchu, moustache that connect to the side burns, just a neck-beard, whatever you can think of we can document it and upload it to the internet.

Thanks for your help in advance, I hope we can have some fun with this and raise some money at the same time.  Also if one of our readers is participating in this contest and you want us to link to you too, please let us know and we can help get your profile out there as well.

If you have any questions drop me a line at hooksorpik at gmail.com