WILKES-BARRE - Since he joined the team in 2006, there isn't much winger Tim Wallace hasn't seen in a Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins uniform.

In fact, if you lump regular-season and playoff games together, only one player, Tom Kostopoulos, has worn a Penguins crest on his chest more times than Wallace has.

But as the Penguins prepare to face the Norfolk Admirals in an East Division semifinals series that begins tonight at the Mohegan Sun Arena, Wallace finds himself wearing a label he's never worn before.

He and his teammates, by virtue of their record-setting regular season, find themselves the favorites to hoist the Calder Cup in June.

"It's different," Wallace admitted.

Will the Penguins live up to that billing or be knocked from their lofty perch? That's the story to be written over the next two months.

"The best thing about this team is we've played playoff hockey all year," Wallace said. "Our record shows that if we stick to the way we've been playing all year, hopefully things will work out. We're well prepared. Hopefully we come out with a good start on Friday."

In the first 11 seasons in team history, the Penguins reached the Calder Cup finals three times - in 2001, 2004 and 2008 - but came away losers on each occasion, proving how difficult it can be for a team to capture the AHL's ultimate prize.

That's a lesson Jesse Boulerice has learned. He's played more than 600 games for 10 teams in 12 years as a pro but hasn't won a championship despite coming tantalizingly close on several occasions.

In 1998, he was a 19-year-old practice squad player with the Philadelphia Phantoms, but he was sent home for the summer before they won the Calder Cup. Boulerice played with the Phantoms from 1998-2002 and again in 2007-08, but they won their second AHL title in 2005, smack dab in between his stints with the team.

Even more agonizingly, Carolina traded him to St. Louis in late January of 2006 in a deal for Doug Weight just a few months before the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup.

Boulerice knows the chance to win a championship doesn't come along every year, and he also knows the Penguins have a golden opportunity in front of them this spring.

The first hurdle facing the Penguins on their quest for the cup is a strong Norfolk team. The Admirals finished the regular season with the league's second-best offense and are led by Mattias Ritola. They have a good mix of experience and youth, skill and grit, and essentially split an eight-game regular-season series with the Penguins.

Perhaps that's why Penguins players, in general, seemed much more comfortable discussing how they match up with Norfolk than how likely they are to win the Calder Cup after their playoff-eve practice session at Coal Street on Thursday morning.

"We've had a good season because we've been able to focus on segments and individual games. That's our mentality in the playoffs," defenseman Joey Mormina said. "If we start thinking about Game 20 of the playoffs and forget about Game 1, you might not get to 20. For us, it's important to focus on Friday, then once Friday's over, focus on Game 2."