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Sidney Crosby is congratulated after his power-play goal Thursday against the Oilers. -- GETTY[/caption]
BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC
Roundup of a lot of randomness from a lot of time around our teams ...
• Rick Tocchet, the coach responsible for the Penguins' maddeningly unproductive power play, is reaching far and wide for answers. In fact, while the team was in California over the past week, he reached out to the two highest possible authorities: Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky.
"Who could possibly know more?" Tocchet was telling me Thursday morning at Consol.
Hard to dispute. Lemieux and Gretzky -- in that order, I might add -- were the two greatest power-play performers in hockey history. They could see one, two, even three plays ahead with the extra man. They could dissect the scene with a glance, orchestrate to the extent they knew what their teammates would do before their teammates did. And if you think that's old-school hyperbole, pop in an old VHS and watch for yourself.
Still, that's not what interested Tocchet most in their perspectives. Rather, it was this: How does a power play best function with multiple elite talents?
You know, such as Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, the key figures in a power play that was 0 for 12 over the four games before going 1 for 3 in the 6-4 setdown of the sickly Oilers Thursday night at Consol Energy Center.
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