SAN JOSE, Calif. -- When the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2009, with young stars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, it looked like the start of a potential dynasty. That it took another seven years for the Penguins to claim the title again shows just how hard this trophy is to win. In beating the San Jose Sharks in this year's finals, the Penguins join the Los Angeles Kings and Chicago Blackhawks as multiple Stanley Cup winners in the salary-cap era -- and officially signaled to the Kings and Blackhawks that it’s now a three-team race to be considered the best franchise of this era.

“We’ve got some work to do,” Penguins GM Jim Rutherford said on the ice after the win, as his players celebrated around him. “We’ve taken the first step. We’ve got a team that doesn’t have to get broken up. This team can stay together next year.”

That puts Pittsburgh among the 2017 Stanley Cup favorites, but the degree of difficulty that comes with repeating in the NHL pushes the Penguins down a couple notches among those favorites. Here’s an entirely-too-early look at the teams most likely to win it all in 2017: