Pascal Dupuis celebrates his first-period goal with Evgeni Malkin on Thursday at Consol Energy Center. — GETTY
DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS
The horn sounded on the 48th NHL opener to be played on Pittsburgh ice Thursday night, the big scoreboard at Consol Energy Center showed a 6-4 victory over the Western Conference powerhouse Ducks, and the home locker room was whooping it up with high-fives and attaboys all around.
Until Pascal Dupuis, as he’d devilishly retell the tale later, pierced through that din.
“Flower! What was that?” No. 9 recalled shouting in furious tone in the direction of Marc-Andre Fleury, making transparent reference to the goaltender’s second-period gaffe that gave Anaheim a goal an fresh life in the game. “You’re killing us out there, man! Just killing us!”
This, of course, caught the attention of absolutely no one who knows Dupuis’ playful personality, never mind his deep friendship with Fleury.
“They knew I was kidding.”
But then, not everyone knows Dupuis just yet.
Patric Hornqvist, newcomer by way of Nashville, began to rush to his goaltender’s defense by beseeching Dupuis, “Come on, Duper, he’s …”
And then he saw Dupuis’ grin, and all concerned — Fleury included — had quite the laugh.
“It’s going to take us some time,” Dupuis said. “We’re just getting to know each other. A lot of stuff feels really new.”
Oh, it’s new, all right.
“That,” an NHL scout from another team was telling me afterward, “was the fastest I’ve seen a Pittsburgh team play in two years. So different. Everything … boom, boom, boom.”
Add three booms to that, and you have the count by which they lowered the boom on Anaheim. And it wasn’t that close. The Penguins outshot the Ducks, 39-29, and controlled play pretty much from front to finish. Corey Perry, one of the visitors’ twin-tower stars along with Ryan Getzlaf, was in superlative form with a hat trick, and it still didn’t matter.
Dupuis, in his first game after 10 months lost to completely reconstructive knee surgery, produced nothing less than a career highlight with a goal and three assists.
Olli Maatta, himself playing for the first time since shoulder surgery, had three primary — and elegant — assists.
Sidney Crosby had two sharp short-side goals and an assist on Hornqvist’s game-opening goal.
Brandon Sutter positively tormented poor John Gibson in his homecoming game with a one-on-goal that was as sweet in its chronological symmetry — 1:01 into the third period — as it was in execution.
It was a spectacular night for a whole lot of individuals, but, as the captain went out of his way to stress, none more than Dupuis and Maatta.
“This showed you a lot about what those two guys are made of,” Crosby said.
At the same time, the Penguins showed even more from the collective standpoint, if you ask me. Because what truly made this performance striking, even in the context of just a single game, was what that scout observed: It was so different.
And that, unmistakably, is to the credit of Mike Johnston and staff, as well as Jim Rutherford.
“It is one game, and we have to remember that,” Dupuis said. “But there were a lot of good things happening out there. There really were.”
I’ve been over Johnston’s Xs and Os already. No need to revisit that in detail or to bury Dan Bylsma’s system all over again, other than maybe to point out that the Penguins did, indeed, move as a pack in all three regions of the ice. And that they did, indeed, support the puck-carrier. And that they did, indeed, activate their defensemen — not just Maatta — at every turn. And that they did, indeed, catch Anaheim flat-footed in the neutral zone by hitting Crosby, Malkin or Sutter in full stride on the middle breakouts. And that they did, indeed, go to the net, partly by plan, partly by virtue of Rutherford adding personnel such as Hornqvist and Steve Downie. And that they did, indeed, adequately cover up for each other’s mistakes by virtue of sticking closer together.
Well, OK, guess I just did revisit all that. And I did pile more dirt on Bylsma’s Xs and Os.
So hey, while I’m at it, let’s isolate on Crosby’s first goal:
Maatta ignited the play with a sharp breakout that found Chris Kunitz on the Pittsburgh side of center red. If you freeze the frame right there, that’s important in and of itself, as the Penguins were quicker to move the puck out of their zone than the norm under Bylsma, in part because defensemen only needed to look 50 or 60 feet up ice — or less — rather than the standard 110 feet of the get-to-our-game range.
“Everybody played tighter,” Maatta said. “It made a difference.”
Kunitz then deftly one-touched the puck to Crosby.
Freeze the frame again: What happened when Crosby used to catch one of those 110-footers?
“He’d be at the other blue line,” Fleury replied when I brought up this sequence.
And he’d be waiting for the pass, reducing one of the world’s fastest players to a statue.
And he’d have no puck support, because his wingers would be fanned all over creation.
And he’d have to take on the Anaheim defense one-on-three.
Instead …
“Sid was flying,” Fleury said. “And when he’s going, who’s going to catch him?”
No one, as it turned out. Crosby danced to his left, had only old friend Ben Lovejoy in his path because Kunitz and Hornqvist were flying right alongside him, kept those skates churning on hyper-drive, and whipped a wrister under Gibson’s left arm.
I had a tough time through training camp getting Crosby to acknowledge hardly anything about this new system. And that’s understandable. There isn’t going to be sniping about Bylsma in this locker room, if only because there was nothing at all to dislike about the man. Or, for that matter, the coach who once carried the Stanley Cup over his head.
But Crosby did come up with the following in our talk after this game: “It’s important to have that kind of support as you’re coming up ice. It’s also important, I think, for us to get a better handle when to make plays like that and when to get the puck behind the defense, especially when you’re going against Perry and Getzlaf and a great team like this. We turned it over a little too much. But sure, the support was there, the speed.”
I asked him to elaborate on the latter: “The good thing about this system is that they can’t key on any one guy. If there are two other guys coming with you with just as much speed, it’s tougher for teams to gap up. They’ll back up. Guys tonight did a really good job of working their way up into the play.”
That’s all Johnston. Really is.
So hats off to the new, old guy stepping in as a first-time NHL head coach right out of juniors with a whole lot of new, old ideas, and getting them off to this kind of start.
“It’s certainly exciting, for sure,” Johnston said afterward, his even-keeled tone conveying nothing of the kind. “First game out of 82, we have some building blocks in place. We have to improve. We forced some plays. We faced a very good team tonight. We can do better.”
Wonderful.
Hats off, too, to Rutherford, the new, old GM. He immediately identified puck possession and going to the net as glaring needs, and he acted on it.
“I liked what I saw,” he told me afterward. “We played together.”
There was nothing not to like. It was one game. It could all be undone if all the newfound tightness unravels Saturday in Toronto, necessitating a restart. But it’s looked all along like such a logical strategy for this particular team, and to see it play out like this, well, there’s no shame in looking at 1 out of 82 in at least a promising light.
“This was fun,” Crosby said.
“It was a really good start,” Dupuis said.
“I thought everybody looked like they fit right in,” Fleury said. “Except when the goaltender screws things up by giving the puck away behind the net.”
He was kidding, too. I think.
October 9, 2014
Column: Smart, slick start for new Penguins
by Dejan Kovacevic • Columns • Penguins
Pascal Dupuis celebrates his first-period goal with Evgeni Malkin on Thursday at Consol Energy Center. — GETTY
DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS
The horn sounded on the 48th NHL opener to be played on Pittsburgh ice Thursday night, the big scoreboard at Consol Energy Center showed a 6-4 victory over the Western Conference powerhouse Ducks, and the home locker room was whooping it up with high-fives and attaboys all around.
Until Pascal Dupuis, as he’d devilishly retell the tale later, pierced through that din.
“Flower! What was that?” No. 9 recalled shouting in furious tone in the direction of Marc-Andre Fleury, making transparent reference to the goaltender’s second-period gaffe that gave Anaheim a goal an fresh life in the game. “You’re killing us out there, man! Just killing us!”
This, of course, caught the attention of absolutely no one who knows Dupuis’ playful personality, never mind his deep friendship with Fleury.
“They knew I was kidding.”
But then, not everyone knows Dupuis just yet.
Patric Hornqvist, newcomer by way of Nashville, began to rush to his goaltender’s defense by beseeching Dupuis, “Come on, Duper, he’s …”
And then he saw Dupuis’ grin, and all concerned — Fleury included — had quite the laugh.
“It’s going to take us some time,” Dupuis said. “We’re just getting to know each other. A lot of stuff feels really new.”
Oh, it’s new, all right.
“That,” an NHL scout from another team was telling me afterward, “was the fastest I’ve seen a Pittsburgh team play in two years. So different. Everything … boom, boom, boom.”
Add three booms to that, and you have the count by which they lowered the boom on Anaheim. And it wasn’t that close. The Penguins outshot the Ducks, 39-29, and controlled play pretty much from front to finish. Corey Perry, one of the visitors’ twin-tower stars along with Ryan Getzlaf, was in superlative form with a hat trick, and it still didn’t matter.
Dupuis, in his first game after 10 months lost to completely reconstructive knee surgery, produced nothing less than a career highlight with a goal and three assists.
Olli Maatta, himself playing for the first time since shoulder surgery, had three primary — and elegant — assists.
Sidney Crosby had two sharp short-side goals and an assist on Hornqvist’s game-opening goal.
Brandon Sutter positively tormented poor John Gibson in his homecoming game with a one-on-goal that was as sweet in its chronological symmetry — 1:01 into the third period — as it was in execution.
It was a spectacular night for a whole lot of individuals, but, as the captain went out of his way to stress, none more than Dupuis and Maatta.
“This showed you a lot about what those two guys are made of,” Crosby said.
At the same time, the Penguins showed even more from the collective standpoint, if you ask me. Because what truly made this performance striking, even in the context of just a single game, was what that scout observed: It was so different.
And that, unmistakably, is to the credit of Mike Johnston and staff, as well as Jim Rutherford.
“It is one game, and we have to remember that,” Dupuis said. “But there were a lot of good things happening out there. There really were.”
I’ve been over Johnston’s Xs and Os already. No need to revisit that in detail or to bury Dan Bylsma’s system all over again, other than maybe to point out that the Penguins did, indeed, move as a pack in all three regions of the ice. And that they did, indeed, support the puck-carrier. And that they did, indeed, activate their defensemen — not just Maatta — at every turn. And that they did, indeed, catch Anaheim flat-footed in the neutral zone by hitting Crosby, Malkin or Sutter in full stride on the middle breakouts. And that they did, indeed, go to the net, partly by plan, partly by virtue of Rutherford adding personnel such as Hornqvist and Steve Downie. And that they did, indeed, adequately cover up for each other’s mistakes by virtue of sticking closer together.
Well, OK, guess I just did revisit all that. And I did pile more dirt on Bylsma’s Xs and Os.
So hey, while I’m at it, let’s isolate on Crosby’s first goal:
Maatta ignited the play with a sharp breakout that found Chris Kunitz on the Pittsburgh side of center red. If you freeze the frame right there, that’s important in and of itself, as the Penguins were quicker to move the puck out of their zone than the norm under Bylsma, in part because defensemen only needed to look 50 or 60 feet up ice — or less — rather than the standard 110 feet of the get-to-our-game range.
“Everybody played tighter,” Maatta said. “It made a difference.”
Kunitz then deftly one-touched the puck to Crosby.
Freeze the frame again: What happened when Crosby used to catch one of those 110-footers?
“He’d be at the other blue line,” Fleury replied when I brought up this sequence.
And he’d be waiting for the pass, reducing one of the world’s fastest players to a statue.
And he’d have no puck support, because his wingers would be fanned all over creation.
And he’d have to take on the Anaheim defense one-on-three.
Instead …
“Sid was flying,” Fleury said. “And when he’s going, who’s going to catch him?”
No one, as it turned out. Crosby danced to his left, had only old friend Ben Lovejoy in his path because Kunitz and Hornqvist were flying right alongside him, kept those skates churning on hyper-drive, and whipped a wrister under Gibson’s left arm.
I had a tough time through training camp getting Crosby to acknowledge hardly anything about this new system. And that’s understandable. There isn’t going to be sniping about Bylsma in this locker room, if only because there was nothing at all to dislike about the man. Or, for that matter, the coach who once carried the Stanley Cup over his head.
But Crosby did come up with the following in our talk after this game: “It’s important to have that kind of support as you’re coming up ice. It’s also important, I think, for us to get a better handle when to make plays like that and when to get the puck behind the defense, especially when you’re going against Perry and Getzlaf and a great team like this. We turned it over a little too much. But sure, the support was there, the speed.”
I asked him to elaborate on the latter: “The good thing about this system is that they can’t key on any one guy. If there are two other guys coming with you with just as much speed, it’s tougher for teams to gap up. They’ll back up. Guys tonight did a really good job of working their way up into the play.”
That’s all Johnston. Really is.
So hats off to the new, old guy stepping in as a first-time NHL head coach right out of juniors with a whole lot of new, old ideas, and getting them off to this kind of start.
“It’s certainly exciting, for sure,” Johnston said afterward, his even-keeled tone conveying nothing of the kind. “First game out of 82, we have some building blocks in place. We have to improve. We forced some plays. We faced a very good team tonight. We can do better.”
Wonderful.
Hats off, too, to Rutherford, the new, old GM. He immediately identified puck possession and going to the net as glaring needs, and he acted on it.
“I liked what I saw,” he told me afterward. “We played together.”
There was nothing not to like. It was one game. It could all be undone if all the newfound tightness unravels Saturday in Toronto, necessitating a restart. But it’s looked all along like such a logical strategy for this particular team, and to see it play out like this, well, there’s no shame in looking at 1 out of 82 in at least a promising light.
“This was fun,” Crosby said.
“It was a really good start,” Dupuis said.
“I thought everybody looked like they fit right in,” Fleury said. “Except when the goaltender screws things up by giving the puck away behind the net.”
He was kidding, too. I think.