CALGARY, Alberta -- Rule of thumb: When Patric Hornqvist isn't scoring, it's everyone else's fault.
Rule of other thumb: When Hornqvist isn't scoring, fix that, and all else gets fixed.
"Ha!" he boomed when I brought up both theories late Thursday night, this after he scored twice in the Penguins' 9-1 annihilation of the Flames and, oh, yeah, all else appears fixed. "I don't know about that. If I'm not scoring, I've got to be better, too. But ..."
But?
"But no, there weren't a lot of pucks."
Nope. Not through those mostly mopey first five games. No pucks, and pretty much just the one lonely body waiting and waiting. Which explains not only how Hornqvist had zero goals on just a dozen shots but also, if we're being honest, it underscored why the collective hadn't come close to establishing any identity.
And then, coincidence or not, the boys crossed the border and came to their senses. Through Toronto, Edmonton and now here, they're 3-0, they've outscored their opponents, 18-6, they've averaged 32.1 shots and, isolating on five-on-five play, they've increased their attempted shots -- counting misses, blocks, everything -- from an average of 45.5 through the first five games to 56.7 in these three.
Less measurable but no less true, they've gone from generating almost all of their offense via the rush to lots and lots of this:
Yeah, that was all nine. Blink and you'll miss them like poor Mike Smith and David Rittich did.
But if you take another look, let it roll through, maybe even let it blur a bit, the pattern couldn't be more powerful: Pucks went to the net, bodies went to the net, goals occurred. From Sidney Crosby's peanut-butter backhander, to Crosby and Hornqvist tipping home Evgeni Malkin's power play fling, to Bryan Rust burying his own rebound, to Phil Kessel winging one from the left boards then burying his own rebound -- with Carl Hagelin setting a bullish screen, by the way -- the first four goals looked like so much else that's been witnessed on this trip.
In fact, that second one's worth a magnifying glass:
To repeat, that hit both sticks. But the real beauty is that Malkin waited until both had crossed in front of Smith, essentially doubling his chances of pulling the winning ticket. If one wasn't going to tip, the other would, and this was what Smith would see upon peeking around the big 7 and 2 in his face:
"I think he was waiting for Horny," Crosby told me regarding Malkin's intent.
"If both of us are there," Hornqvist would add, "all he's got to do is get it to us."
Which he did. Somewhat softly, slightly elevated, elegantly and -- doubly -- completed:
That's not magic. That's a mindset. And it's one that, for whatever reason, all of this team's forwards except one had all but abandoned in the early going.
So what's happened here in Canada?
Slicker, cooler ice?
Tips from a customs officer?
I asked several players and, by every account, there was never some seminal moment, no stirring speech. There were a few more focused video sessions leading into Toronto, as well as the standard chatter in the room. But the understanding was there, if only because Mike Sullivan and staff had been preaching it to the point they were probably mumbling it in their sleep.
"It's something we've been talking about for a while," Sullivan replied to my question on that topic after the game, showing a small smile. "This is what we've been saying to guys: If we shoot the puck, then we'll go there. Everybody's got to know we're going to have a shoot-first mentality. And if we have that, it's going to force us to go to the net because we're always going to go to the puck. It's a heightened awareness of that."
Right. Heightened awareness. It's a mindset.
The Penguins are far from perfect, even in these three games, even with all this offense, even with Matt Murray having come alive. The Maple Leafs had 38 shots, the Oilers 46, the Flames 39. Those have to come down, and maybe that'll be the next mindset.
But never forget where this franchise's successes are always founded. It's at the far end, and with one facet above all.
Or, to put it another way, Hornqvist's got four goals in his past couple games, so everything's OK.
• While on the theme, give it up for Derick Brassard.
No, not for the three assists. I'm talking about his four shots, which was one more than he'd registered through his previous six games!
Recorded for posterity, this occurred in the first period:
Nice overall sequence, huh?
Crosby and Jake Guentzel drive right into the solar plexus of the Calgary zone, and Brassard impressively follows them in there, then dangles on the backhand -- dude, shoot it already -- before coming across to his forehand. And the fact that it resulted in one of Smith's few saves on the evening shouldn't diminish both the path and the decision made.
That's no accident. Brassard stayed out an extra 20 minutes in the morning with Mark Recchi in the least imaginative drill in hockey history. Recchi spilled pucks out from a bucket, spread them between the hashes and watched Brassard pull the trigger again and again.
I recorded that one for posterity, too:
Good for him. It's a start.
• Remember the hockey world going berserk over the Maple Leafs having the NHL's highest-powered offense?
That No. 1 ranking, as this is typed, now belongs to the Penguins at 4.38 goals per game. Next down, way down, are the Capitals at 3.89, then the Leafs at 3.80. And on an individual level, Malkin, whose first couple shifts of this game were positively bear-like -- is one point off the NHL's scoring lead with 15 points despite having played two fewer games than everyone ahead of him.
But hey, parades and passing of torches and all that.
• It's so hard to gauge what Sullivan's lineup change achieved toward this game, as the Flames were so defensively negligent that the Penguins could have gotten away with most any effort. I hate to say that, but it's easily corroborated by the visitors themselves, who hardly felt they were all-around awesome.
Putting Brassard with Crosby puts Guentzel on the wrong wing. Not wild about it.
Putting Hornqvist with Matt Cullen and Riley Sheahan on what I've been calling the Hip Pocket Line, only because Sullivan's been assembling it inside games based on need, feels like a Band-Aid.
Putting Juuso Riikola in the press box is a mistake, no matter the result. Meaning that it can't be a long-term solution to anything.
Putting Daniel Sprong there ... I just don't know on that one. Riikola could at least go to the minors. Sprong can't. Don't envy anyone making that call.
Point is, it's all still plenty unsettled, even with the team playing better.
• Rust's goal was his first, and it followed a morning skate that was as vigorous as any I'd seen this month. Seriously, I thought the dude was going to carve the ice to shreds during one stop-and-start drill.
Must have felt good, right?
Never underestimate how much the first matters. Slumps are slumps at any other stage of the season, but not at the start. Players hate seeing that egg next to their name, young or old.
Cullen was no different after his own first was this team's ninth and final goal, hardly pivotal but still clearly important to him.
"Nice to finally get one," he told me.
Jack Johnson got his, too, rounding out the skaters who've played all eight games.
• Maybe just as important, Johnson received a rather rousing defense from Sullivan after this game regarding his showing two nights earlier in Edmonton, when he was on the ice for all five of the Oilers' goals.
"I think it's a good boost of confidence for Jack," Sullivan said of Johnson's goal, a power-play snap shot off a dot-to-dot feed from Brassard late in the second period. "I think Jack's quietly played a sound game for us. And I don't think he always gets the credit he deserves."
This was where he veered.
"For example, in Edmonton, I know there was talk that he was on the ice for five goals against. Well, the reality is, as we break down the involvement of those goals, he wasn't ... he had no responsibility on any of those goals against. He just happened to be on the ice for them."
OK. Look, I'm not about to argue that point with a man wearing two Stanley Cup rings. And even if he'd never won any, no one knows better than a coach who's responsible for a defensive lapse. I respect that.
At the same time, I saw Johnson as being terribly late on two of those Edmonton goals, notably this one:
Johnson wasn't anywhere near as bad as the five-goal thing might make it seem, but neither did he have "no responsibility." He was way too wide, off to the right, locked on Leon Draisaitl at center red rather than simply counting up orange sweaters and getting back.
• I'll add this: Johnson looked far more comfortable in this game than in Edmonton, and I'll stubbornly reiterate that's because he belongs on the left side. That's where Sullivan had him in this game, next to newly inserted Chad Ruhwedel, and it went well.
The coach has to do his part, too.
• Other teams: Stop letting Kessel have breakaways. It doesn't end well.
• The power play was 2 for 2, and it's now 7 for 20, or an insane 35 percent. That's not surprising. What should be surprising, and probably more appreciated, is that the penalty-killing, which quashed all three Calgary power plays despite 12 shots, now ranks fourth in the NHL at 86.4 percent.
That's to the credit of all concerned, Murray above all, but I'll single out the dogged forechecking of the kill-opening forward duo of Sheahan and Hagelin. There are times it seems they spend as much time attacking as defending while short-handed, and that's a special skill.
• The Flames aren't this bad. But they also aren't good. And it won't help that their new/old coach, Bill Peters, who did nothing but disappoint in Carolina, offered this after the game: "We needed to be more physical on the forecheck."
Right. Because it's 1975.
• Think back to the last time Murray made a remark about how he thought he played well despite giving up way too many goals.
Did it make you mad?
OK, next time that happens, remind yourself of what happened in Edmonton, when he gave up five goals on 41 shots -- and made at least a handful of extraordinary stops -- then somehow kept his mind clean coming down Highway 2 to perform at an exemplary level all night against the Flames.
That's why he does it. He focuses on the process, not the outcome. As he and I discussed afterward, it's like a hitter in baseball who goes 0 for 4 but screams liners into fielders' gloves all night. That guy's going to get a good night of sleep because he did everything that was in his control. That's Murray's approach.
"I feel like it's going well," he'd say after this.
He does that, too, understating it when he's really good. The truth: He was every bit as good with that shutout in Toronto as he was in Edmonton, and as he was here.
• Late last night in the visitors' locker room, Crosby was piling away his gear into a big travel bag, then, hunched over and still in his sweat-stained undergarments from the game, he began snapping up the handle.
A Calgary kid assisting the Penguins' equipment staff approached.
"Mr. Crosby," the kid would say, one hand outstretched, "I can get that."
"No thanks," the captain replied with a soft smile and full eye contact. "I'm good."
He really is.
• I'm flying home today. Chris Bradford will fly to Vancouver to round out this trip, but I've got to get home for Steelers-Browns. We appreciate you reading our hockey coverage. This is getting fun.
