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A Time Out at Last for the Penguins

May 8, 2018, 10:14 AM ET [7 Comments]
Jay Greenberg
Blogger •NHL Hall of Fame writer • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Penguins survived the absence of Kris Letang for an entire Cup run, a playoff slump by Marc-Andre Fleury, and consecutive four-series physical and mental grind to become the first team to take consecutive championships in the salary cap era. But either that cap reached back to get them 11 months after key support players became financial casualties or Bill Torrey hustled to heaven barely in time to convince the hockey gods about how hard it is to keep winning and winning and winning.

Nothing personal against Pittsburgh, where Torrey started in hockey as the PR guy for the AHL Hornets. But don’t you find it a strange coincidence how Bow Tie Bill, whose Islanders were the last team to win three straight on the way to four, went to his eternal reward five days before Evgeni Kuznetsov’s overtime goal ended the Penguin reign?

When Dotty, wrung out by a feud with her jealous sister, quit the Rockford Peaches, telling Jimmy Dugan, “It just got too hard,” the manager replied, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t, everybody would do it.”

Indeed the Penguins won it last year the hardest of ways, surviving a Washington comeback from 3-1 with a Game Seven road victory, winning a double overtime Game Seven in the conference final and being badly outplayed territorially by Nashville in the first four games of the final.

This year they lost Fleury in the expansion draft, Chris Kunitz, Nick Bonino, Matt Cullen and Trevor Daley to the cap, then Gino Malkin in the Philadelphia series leading into the first two games against Washington,

The Penguins, far from themselves for much of this regular season, were proven at hanging on the ropes and, as the Flyers were reminded a round ago, coming off throwing knockout combinations. Sidney Crosby did that, in fact, to the Caps in Game One. But from the time Alex Ovechkin batted his own rebound out of the air to win Game Three, you could sense the Penguins were in trouble this time, plenty deep enough in resolve sure, but not in bodies and good fortune. All the good vibes from all those clutch survival experiences and the bad vibes the Caps have been shlepping around since the early eighties still couldn’t pull Pittsburgh through.

Despite it all, the Penguins still had two of the best five players in the game, plenty of reason for them to believe they could do it again, but they were rundown physically and mentally in being run down by a Caps team that perhaps was mentally freed by its own severe cap losses of being a favorite. If the Penguins survived this round, and Phil Kessel and Derrick Brassard got going, well, things like that surely have happened over four rounds that are a long season unto itself. Exhausted as the Penguins looked early in the Nashville series, they actually did a year again.

But again? A lot to ask.

“Maybe we were a little bit tired,” said Malkin. “I don’t know.”

We don’t have to be inside their bodies to confirm that fatigue, history providing plenty of proof. Inevitably, it just got too hard, why we almost surely never again will witness dynasties again like the Canadiens (1956-60, 1976-79) and the Islanders (1980-83); probably won’t even see another run of two Cups in the cap era for quite awhile.

Too many good players are spread out over too many teams. As proven over time as became the Blackhawks and Kings of this decade, neither could win back-to-back. Hats off to the Penguins for believing they could do that, but considering everything, it was a long shot.


* * *

We understand all the well-analyzed factors explaining the Golden Knights. A generous expansion draft a replenishing 17 years after the last one. Only one team this time coming into a league of unprecedented parity. Excellent scouting and drafting judgment by George McPhee and Kelly McCrimmon. The availability of a Cup-winning goalie. A blunder by the Blue Jackets in exposing William Karlsson

But watching Vegas close out the Sharks like we have seen few teams close out anybody in four-plus decades of covering the game, we have become convinced that all of the above factor behind Gerard Gallant’s coaching and the eagerness of rejected players to buy in. A team that thrived all season on four lines of virtually equal ice time rolled in waves, utterly drowning a good Sharks team that in Game Four had appeared to be taking control.

The fact that the Golden Knights could do this in a second-round series, with a collection of the 11th best players from the other 30 teams, has moved past astonishing to downright jarring to owners of franchises like the Islanders who have won one round in 25 years, and even the management of teams like the Flyers, who haven’t advanced since 2012, partly in their patient determination to open a five-year window of true contention.

In just eight months the Golden Knights have gotten to where the Leafs, Blue Jackets, Wild, Panthers, Sabres, Flames, Oilers, Hurricanes and Coyotes have wanted to be for years and in most cases, shouldn’t expect to be for at least two more.

Those teams are the footmen for this Vegas tank disguised as a pumpkin coach. We have all seen improbable runs of two or three rounds fueled by a hot goalie and player sacrifice, but the Knights’ 109-point regular season excludes them from this genre. At this stage, the only thing that leaves them unreal is how totally real they have become in such a short time.

* * *

Stop me if you have read this before. Or, don’t read it and still weep in San Jose, Pittsburgh and Boston, like they did in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anaheim, and Colorado in the last round. A lack of secondary scoring sent all these teams to their doom.

Sidney Crosby, Patric Hornqvist and Jake Guentzel accounted for 18 of Pittsburgh’s 26 goals in the Washington series, an unsustainable percentage for success. After an explosion by Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak in Game One, the Bruins got shut down thereafter. To the rescue came two goals from Rick Nash (which, by the way flattered his impact), one from Jacob Debrusk and one from David Krejci, turning this cavalry into F Troop. So much for all that depth that made Boston a sudden powerhouse.

The Sharks, parading Joe Thornton out for warm-ups – like in El Cid when they propped up the revered warrior on his horse for the battle when he already was dead – actually got some backup from Logan Couture and Tomas Hertl but not enough to support a revised first line of Evander Kane, Joe Pavelski and Joonas Donskoi. Fourteen total goals in six games are not a ticket to advance.

Feel free to blame the stars, because that’s why they make the big bucks. But they rarely are enough. Bryan Bickell and Dave Bolland got the late third period goals in Boston that gave the Black Hawks their 2013 Cup. Bolland had three and Dustin Byfuglien three, same as Patrick Kane in Chicago’s 2010 final series win over the Flyers.

The Kings’ Trevor Lewis had two to put away the stubborn Devils in 2012. We could go on and on but you get the idea. Sing the praises of these unsung scorers when they deliver, because they take off the pressure, can change the matchups and get you to the next round.

Exceptions this spring were the Devils, who had 12 players score goals, just not enough of them in losing to Tampa Bay in five; and Columbus, which also had 12 different scorers, yet will withered defensively against Washington; and Toronto, which scored 20 goals in the series with Boston and had a lead into the third period of Game Seven. The structure and goaltending broke down in those places and you can’t win without both, of course. But repeatedly through history, when the top line gets managed and a second line doesn’t step up, winning is unimaginable.
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