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Brooks Orpik has been a voice of the locker room for a while in Pittsburgh, some may call his insights the conscience of the team. Yesterday he gave some interesting quotes to Josh Yohe of the Pittsburgh Tribune that I thought were intriguing.
Orpik touched on how the Red Wings owned the Penguins back in the 2008 Stanley Cup Final and how the Red Wings didn’t have to use grit and extracurricular nonsense to do so.
Given the mammoth disciplinary meltdowns of recent memory for the Penguins I think that the light bulb might have finally come on for Pittsburgh.
Here is a passage from Josh Yohe’s article in the Pittsburgh Tribune:
“I always go back to when we lost the Final in 2008 to Detroit,” Orpik said.
The Penguins entered the 2008 Stanley Cup Final on a 12-2 rampage through the Eastern Conference and believed they could emotionally overwhelm the older, calmer Red Wings.
They were wrong.
The poised team prevailed, something Orpik doesn't believe was coincidental.
“The first couple of games,” Orpik said, “we thought we'd run them right out of the building. And they pretty much laughed at us. They had the puck the entire game. We were in the box the entire game. That's something I draw back on. Not everybody was here for that. But it was the most frustrating thing (in that series).”
Orpik's Penguins mostly have proven incapable of turning the other cheek.
Many of their top players — Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, James Neal, Jussi Jokinen and, most recently, Kris Letang — have been guilty of retaliatory penalties during the past few seasons. The problem seems to escalate during the postseason.
The Penguins so badly lost their cool in Game 3 of the 2012 Eastern Conference quarterfinals in Philadelphia that three players were suspended for Game 4. They also snapped against the Boston Bruins in Game 1 of last season's Eastern Conference final.
Orpik said remembering how the Red Wings handled confrontation in 2008 could be beneficial now.
“They just walked away,” Orpik said. “And they beat us. And that was all that mattered.”
Better late than never to have this revelation. It is absolutely the proper mindset to have. Look at the current version of the Detroit Red Wings. I believe they may have the best chance out of any team in the Eastern Conference to knock of the Bruins this year.
Why?
Because they value the puck and they don’t care about outhitting a team or trying to show how tough they are. They just play. If a team can ignore Boston’s tough guy act then they are one step closer to potentially defeating them.
The real reason the Bruins are such a great team is because they are really good at actually playing hockey. Yes, the Bruins have tons of “grit” but that isn’t what makes them very good. The Bruins have top end players who are highly talented, they have role players who have skill, the grit stuff is just icing on the cake, not the central focal point (contrary to belief).
John Scott has “grit”, Jonathan Toews has “grit” what separates the two players? Talent. It’s all about talent. Without the talent, the grit is meaningless. Talent comes first, play the guys with talent, and if they also happen to have that grit factor, great, what a nice bonus. I’m not anti-grit, I’m anti-grit with no hockey talent.
The Bruins are masters at putting up nice distractions to deflect other teams away from the hockey game itself, a lot of their successful distractions are indeed grit related. It works, it is very effective, and it is up to the opposition to ignore it. I think the Red Wings can ignore it and will focus on hockey, they have proven this approach works for years. When teams strip away the gamesmanship of trying to prove toughness and just focus on playing hockey, all that grit stuff gets minimized. It takes two to tango, don’t be that dance partner.
The Penguins need to adopt the Red Wings strategy. Play hockey, skill over grit. I don’t see the Red Wings throwing a Craig Adams or Tanner Glass over the boards for ice time, I see guys where the focus is on speed and skill. The Red Wings are up 1-0 in their series and it’s certainly not panic time in Boston yet, but the Red Wings have the right blueprint. It may not get them the series, but it will be the main reason if they do get a series win over Boston.
Game 1 against Columbus was a nice building block for the Penguins. They did a nice job staying composed as a whole. One game is an isolated event. They need to prove this is a “lifestyle change”. If the Penguins commit to this newfound disciplined attitude and turn the cheek kind of mindset, the Columbus series is probably not going to last too long.
Skill>”Grit”
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