PHILADELPHIA -- "Something's wrong, right?"
Olli Maatta had no idea, I'm guessing, of the magnitude of the oxymoron that had just come from his mouth. And that was magnificently revealing in and of itself.
The scene was the visiting locker room at Wells Fargo Center, late Saturday night, not too long after the Penguins punched out the Flyers, 5-4, even though they were outshot, out-chanced, out-possessed, out-blocked, out-faceoff-ed and, of course, out-power-played. And it was astonishingly easy to see they had no earthly idea how to feel about it.
"I mean, we won," Maatta continued, maybe thinking back to his weak, errant shot that somehow ended up on Evgeni Malkin's blade for the winner.
OK, probably not.
"Look," he tried again. "We aren't playing the way we want. We need to be better. We need to be more sound, more consistent. But ..."
The eureka moment had arrived.
" ... but it was a battle out there."
A battle. Hm. Yes, it was a battle. There weren't any fights or even roughing minors, but there was one bout of nastiness after Patric Hornqvist clocked Claude Giroux.
So yes, I concurred, as if to urge him along toward something more substantive. It was a battle.
"See? It was a battle."
Mm-hm. A battle.
"We need to be better on the West Coast. We really do."
You do, Olli. All of you.
And just as the 2015-16 season ended so gloriously out there, in San Jose, site of this week's trip finale Saturday after stops in Anaheim and Los Angeles, so, too, could this one find its bona fide beginning.
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