Kovacevic: Like taking candy from a 'baby'

Henrik Lundqvist is a baby. But hey, don't take my word for it.

Don't trust your eyes, either. Not even if you spent Thursday night inside Consol Energy Center and witnessed the Penguins routing the Rangers, 4-1, by rattling off three goals in 99 seconds, shortly after the visitors' franchise goaltender embarrassed himself, his team, his profession and possibly his sport by throwing a tantrum and throwing his net off its moorings during live action.

No, there's no need to absorb anything beyond what the guy at the other end of the rink had to say about that scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnE7kNM9sNA

Oh, my. "Baby stuff," indeed.

And you thought Marc-Andre Fleury couldn't take shots at the other net.



The Penguins can't stand Lundqvist. They can't stand his theatrics any time an opposing player passes through his area code. They can't stand shooting into his comically inflated pads. To them, the man known lovingly as "King Henrik" in New York might as well be the Drama King. Or the Mattress King.

They can't stand this opponent as a whole, really, particularly their passive posture under Alain Vigneault that, if it were weighed by entertainment value, couldn't be aired on C-SPAN in the dead of night.

But above all, if they're being completely candid, the Penguins can't stand that they've been thoroughly dominated by Lundqvist and the Rangers the past three years. They'd lost 10 of the previous 12. They'd scored only 18 goals. They'd been eliminated in the past two playoffs, one of those an epic choke after a 3-1 series lead.

So when the first period of this game was defined by Lundqvist making a couple of sharp saves and the Rangers' usual four-guys-clasping-hands-at-the-blue-line defense, it looked like another sorry sequel. Worse, it looked like the Penguins would stumble into this pivotal March, with a game every other day and a Metro opponent every other game, offering no good reason why this spring should be any different.

A few minutes into the second, though, this happened:



As was evident, Lundqvist was clipped by his teammate, Ryan McDonagh. Nothing nefarious. Just an accident. And Lundqvist, who's so accustomed to acting out every episode of contact that he probably couldn't process that there was no villain in a legit collision, went all bonkers, anyway. He shouted angrily toward referee Trevor Hanson, presumably because he felt he was hurt and felt he'd earned a timeout.

Even though action was heading the other direction, to his team's benefit.

Even though he sure didn't look hurt during the hissy fit that followed:



Wow. I didn't believe what I saw live, and I still don't.

What's more, the Penguins had been rushing toward the New York blue line and, a moment after the net was off its moorings, Scott Wilson shot the puck toward where the net had been. The whistle finally blew, as Hanson no longer had a choice, and what was left on the ice in Lundqvist's wake was bewilderment.

Lundqvist didn't speak to reporters afterward, but teammate Derek Stepan said, "I don't think I've ever seen him that mad," and the home side seemed surprised, as well.

"Somebody hit him, he's losing his stick or ... I don't know why he's mad," Evgeni Malkin recalled. "It's a game, you know. Maybe he's frustrated a little bit."

"I had no idea how the net came off," Sidney Crosby said.

"I didn't know what was going on," Trevor Daley said. "Honestly, I'd never seen anything like that before. I was shocked."

Those off the ice seemed less shocked than dismayed. Combine all of the above with all that's occurred between these teams the past three years, then add that all the officials could call under the NHL rule book was a mere minor penalty for delay of game, and the crowd of 18,492 rose in unison to boo, jeer, taunt as vocally as at any time all winter.

Why only a minor?

As this detailed work on ScoutingTheRefs.com explains, because Wilson wasn't on a breakaway and didn't begin the act of shooting until after the net was off, all that could be applied was Rule 63.2: "A minor penalty shall be imposed on any player who delays the game by deliberately displacing a goal post from its normal position."

You'd better believe this will change now, which is where Lundqvist will have embarrassed the sport at its highest level. It already happened in the AHL in 2014, when David Leggio saw a two-on-none coming his way and did this:



The AHL reacted right away to an action it felt violated the very spirit of the game by imposing a game misconduct to any goaltender knocking off his net on any type of breakaway. Where that punishment stings most is that the affected team is awarded a penalty shot against the backup goaltender, who has to enter the crease ice cold.

"That's a pretty big deterrent," Matt Murray, freshly up from the AHL, was telling me. "I know we just saw it happen here, but I'm pretty sure we'll never see it in the AHL again."

Anyway, the second-period outlook Thursday only darkened at 16:50 when the Rangers' Chris Kreider stuck a softy under Fleury's blocker for the opening goal.

But then, less than a minute later, came those three goals in 99 seconds:







In order, that's Crosby, Malkin and Patric Hornqvist off a fine Phil Kessel feed. Boom, 3-1.

"He got rattled out there, and we scored three goals on him," Hornqvist flatly assessed.

Kessel would add an empty-netter, but only after nearly everyone on the roster acquitted himself well. Sullivan, too. The coach knew his counterpart would match Derrick Brassard with Crosby but, rather than reflexively avoiding it with the final change, he stayed the course because, as he confessed with a rare devilish grin, "Sometimes two coaches can like the same matchup." Sullivan also had a quick trigger finger in yanking a sluggish Chris Kunitz from the top line in favor of Carl Hagelin. He rolled four lines to maintain energy, with everyone but injured Kevin Porter -- he exited in the second when his leg crashed into the boards and he'll be examined Friday -- getting a minimum seven minutes. And in the third period, with so much riding on that two-goal lead, he kept preaching the forecheck as much as the caution, resulting in New York having a hollow 5-4 edge in shots.

Oh, and this: Derrick Pouliot played well. And hard. Maybe most impressive, he was solid enough through two periods that Sullivan entrusted him with seven shifts in the third.

Pouliot's actually had four such games in a row, and I single him out here not only because I've been critical of his effort and intensity since ... man, maybe his first rookie camp ... but also because it wouldn't feel right to lump him in with praise for Sullivan. If this kid's light is ever going to stay on, it won't be because Sullivan or Rick Tocchet or Sergei Gonchar or any teammates do that. It'll be on his own. I've seen more fire from him in the past week than in the entirety of his previous NHL career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMH3bIxC0H0

Really, all of the Penguins might have grown up a bit on this night.

Again, it's only two points, it's March and all that. At the same time, this group has unquestionably begun to develop that long-missing identity under Sullivan. These guys now come back in games, which they couldn't do for a year and a half under Mike Johnston. They get leadership from their stars. They shoot on power plays. They backcheck with gusto. They don't often make mind-numbing decisions in their end.

My God, they beat the Flyers at Consol.

Now they beat the Rangers and chased Lundqvist with alleged neck spasms -- even Vigneault described the issue as "not that serious" -- not after the collision but after those three goals somehow found holes in all that extra equipment. Funny how that works.

Which reminds me, incidentally, that not everyone grew up here.

I asked Fleury if he considered celebrating this victory by shoving off his own net.

"Ha! No," he came back. "Maybe I should have. That would have been pretty funny."

Or maybe he's waiting for a far more rewarding last laugh.