Evgeni Malkin didn't have to say it. His slumped shoulders, his snail-like removal of his skates and, yeah, a soft smile told the story.
"I'm glad this is over," he'd say, anyway, after one final twirl as the official No. 1 star of the Penguins' 4-3 shootout victory over the Devils on Saturday night at PPG Paints Arena. "This was tough."
Not this game, necessarily, though it certainly came with its own challenges.
He was referring instead, as he'd clarify, to this weird-in-a-lot-of-ways stretch of seven games over 11 days in which his team played in six different cities, five times against trapping opponents, and most of those without their only two net-front forwards, Patric Hornqvist and Chris Kunitz.
And yet, though this won't exactly earn any declarations of valor, they endured it well enough to go 3-3-1 and to once, twice, three times extend their streak of not losing back-to-back games in regulation, which dates back to Dec. 18-19, 2015 and now stands at 15-0-1. For this one, they had to rebound from a seriously sluggish 6-2 loss Friday at Minnesota, and they did so by pumping 49 shots at New Jersey's backup goaltender, Keith Kinkaid.
"It was a very important game tonight," Malkin would reply when I asked about the timing value of these two points. "We know we're a good team. Forty-nine shots shows how we can play, probably every night. Now we have some time off, a little bit of rest, and then we keep going. It's a long season."
How much rest?
"Three days off!"
He immediately thought better of that.
"Well, not three. Maybe we watch some video but don't practice."
And then he thought better of that.
"OK, we practice. But we don't play a game until Wednesday."
This is for sure. That'll be back in Brooklyn.
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