Try as I might, there won't be any topping Brent Burns' analysis of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, so let's begin here by just bowing out of the big man's way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqcPrMbTU_w
Yep. That's it. Gap-toothed and grizzly-bearded, but elegantly on point.
The Penguins owned the first period, Burns' Sharks owned the second, and all the rest was a stage for someone to step up and do something special.
Which, of course, Nick Bonino did, with 2:33 left in regulation:
Which, of course, pushed the Penguins past the Sharks, 3-2.
Which, of course, propelled them to a potentially pivotal launch in the series.
Which, of course, will prompt endless additional analysis from commentators across the continent, from professional pundits to Downtown office workers gathered at the water cooler. Everyone will offer expertise on everything from faceoff to final horn.
Well, count me out. I'm with Burns.
This came down to two terrific teams engaged in the equivalent of a tennis match, with momentum volleyed back and forth, back and forth, to such an extent that it's almost inconceivable that this series won't go the full seven games.
And yeah, it came down to one excellent all-around play.
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Sidney Crosby was sensational. Brilliant, really, in the scope of the event. Peter DeBoer, San Jose's coach, opened by assigning his top matchup defenseman, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, to the Crosby line, and Crosby gave him no option but to adhere to that.
So when Evgeni Malkin's line took advantage of Vlasic and his partner, Justin Braun, getting stuck on an extended shift, with Bryan Rust burying this rebound ...
... and then Crosby utterly embarrassed Braun with a violent turn in the corner to set up Conor Sheary right near Vlasic ...
... DeBoer had to have grasped in the moment the enormity of his challenge in this game and maybe beyond: He was either going to risk using his negligible third defense pairing, one he barely trusts to log a dozen minutes a night, against the sizzling Bonino line, or he'd have to deploy his second pairing of Burns and Paul Martin, both better suited to make plays than stop them.
Hello, game-winner.
And hello to pretty much everything that makes these Penguins special, encapsulated within 15 seconds, all 200 feet of ice and all five skaters touching the puck:
That up there is Brian Dumoulin bursting away from the Sharks' Tomas Hertl, no small feat given that Hertl's one of San Jose's speed demons.
"I'm just looking to skate the puck out of trouble," Dumoulin would say with a shrug.
He does that, then backhands up the boards where Phil Kessel dutifully awaits, having passionately bought into Mike Sullivan's rink-length system of puck support.
Kessel's thought process was no more complex than Dumoulin's.
"Keep the puck moving the right direction," he said, and that's precisely what he did with another bank up the same boards to Carl Hagelin.
Hagelin was immediately slowed by Hertl -- now blazing back the other way on the backcheck -- but Martin also committed in that direction.
That's when Kris Letang, seen zipping across the top up there, made a decision.
"Haggy's got so much speed in the neutral zone that teams always have to be so careful," he said. "As soon as I saw the puck was getting to him, I felt like I could try to get between the two D back there."
He did try, but all he mustered was a shot blocked by Burns. With one caveat: He drove the puck with enough force that he knocked Burns' stick from his hands:
"I don't really know how that happened," Burns replied when I asked.
But he knew that it did, obviously. Letang realized it, too.
"I saw a stick. I wasn't sure it whose it was, but I knew somebody didn't have a stick, so I felt like I could still make a play."
The blocked shot skittered into the right corner. Letang chased that down right away and tried to fire it in front. But the stickless Burns blocked that, too.
Back in the corner again, Hagelin gave chase. And lo and behold, the indefatigable Hertl was on him again, apparently determined to collect the paycheck of every San Jose player on the ice that shift. So Hagelin chipped back low to Letang.
This time, Letang took it a little more slowly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TfhUvQftqc
With Burns bearing down again, Letang spotted Bonino well behind Martin, noticed Martin was manning the front post rather than, you know, the man, and felt that a rocketed pass might make it through to Bonino's blade.
It did:
Bonino received it with a bit of give, spared a millisecond for it to settle, lowered his right knee for leverage, then snapped that flat puck over Martin Jones' blocker:
"Yeah, just came into the zone a little bit late," Bonino said. "I saw Tanger in the corner. Haggy was down there battling with him. I wasn't sure if I should get out of there and get above their guys."
That's a reference to needing to cover for Letang. No worries. Kessel had that.
"But those two kept it alive, and Tanger put it right on my stick. It's one of those shots that wasn't my hardest shot by any means, but I just found a way to kind of flip it over him. Great pass from Tanger."
A pass that probably shouldn't have gotten through, if viewed from both sides. Certainly if viewed from Martin's strikingly dramatic expression in falling to his knees a la Willem Dafoe at the end of the celluloid classic "Platoon:"
TAYLOR HAASE / DKPS
I couldn't find Martin in the San Jose room afterward, but here's assuming his on-ice reaction to his lapse came through in living color.
The stage was set. One team made a terrific play, the other a terrible play.
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Again, that's all I've got.
I don't believe anything was settled on this Monday night beyond that puck settling on Bonino's blade. The Penguins did, indeed, come at San Jose with the needed shock-value speed at the outset. They did, indeed, get the first goal. The Sharks did, indeed, counter by pinning the puck deep in the Pittsburgh zone for onerous stretches of the second period. Both parties did, indeed, benefit from big-time goaltending. And the side that was going to come through with the climactic moment did, indeed, create this one.
True story: When I got done recording that quick segment with Burns that's shown atop this column, he raised that bearded chin my way and caught my attention anew.
"Hey," he snapped with a slight smile. "If we do this again, just like this game, we'll be the ones happy after the next one, OK?"
I wasn't about to argue. If Dafoe plays the role of Martin, who'd play this guy?