Oh, the Penguins brought passion.
That couldn't be optional, given the extra energy coursing everywhere through PPG Paints Arena on this Tuesday night, the first home game since the Squirrel Hill shooting. Fans outside were lining up to contribute to collections for the families of the fallen. Prominent members of the local Jewish community were on hand. Injured Pittsburgh Police officers, too.
And then, this brilliant video, hurriedly orchestrated by the team for this occasion only, was shown on the big board...
We stand together.#StrongerThanHate pic.twitter.com/EU6G2iotIZ
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) October 30, 2018
And then 11 seconds of community silence, representing the 11 lives lost.
And finally, by the time Scott Schubert, our city's chief of police, strode to center ice for that unforgettable ceremonial faceoff, flapping that blue-striped flag with both hands to the standing, roaring crowd, the roof might as well have popped off:
It felt, to be honest, as if it were no place for a hockey game.
As Sidney Crosby, a participant in that faceoff with the Islanders' Anders Lee, would word it, "We had a lot of different emotions going through our minds to start."
Can't even imagine. It's generally enough of a cross to bear for our local sports teams that fans keep expectations at perpetually, maybe irrationally high levels. But to carry that, then add the weight of performing in such an environment, right after the Steelers had more than held their own at Heinz Field on Sunday, right after that pregame ceremony ... well, there was always the chance that too much would be too much.
It sure wasn't because they didn't try.
"I thought we played a pretty spirited first period," Mike Sullivan replied to my question afterward about the scope of some of the costlier breakdowns, especially early. "We came out with tons of energy ..."
He paused a moment. As Mike Tomlin eloquently illustrated Sunday, sports and tragedy seldom share parallels. Words are chosen carefully.
"I know it was emotional for our guys. I think they wanted to inspire our city. And I felt like our energy was there. I thought we played really hard. We didn't always play smart. As a result, the quality of some of their chances were high. But I also thought the Islanders were somewhat opportunistic with some of the chances that they got."
At the risk of mind-reading, I'm comfortable extrapolating Sullivan's slight misuse of "opportunistic" there: The Islanders got lucky. That's undoubtedly what he meant to say.
He'd be so right, too.
Get this: At the precise point where New York took a 5-2 lead at 13:49 of the second period, the Penguins were outshooting the Islanders, 22-10. Through the second intermission, they'd commanded possession of the puck an almost inconceivably high 61.9 percent of the time. They rallied to tie after an early two-goal deficit, they clanged two other shots off pipes, and they'd mostly carried over the same A-level game they'd just taken coast-to-coast across Canada.
Breakdowns?
Sure, there were a couple. But in watching live, then discussing with those involved, then watching the video, they weren't as much egregious as they were ... weirdness.
Here's New York's first goal, a two-on-one one-timer from Andrew Ladd:
What went wrong?
Nothing that the defensemen did, as is plainly evident. Jack Johnson was up ice initially but got back in ample time to even the numbers. And there certainly was nothing Matt Murray could do on that David Volek-looking delivery. (Sorry, but tell me it wasn't that.) No, the lone lapse here was a lousy line change, with Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel staying out too long and a fresh-over-the-boards Bryan Rust not having any chance to get back.
Ladd, meanwhile, had stormed straight from the visitors' bench to present a target for Valtteri Filppula.
"We didn't give them much," Rust would tell me. "But when we did, they were two-on-ones back the other way. We weren't as detailed as we could have been. We'll clean that up."
Sullivan essentially echoed that, saying, "We could have been sharper with some of the changes we made, some of the positioning."
The next goal came less than two minutes later and no less suddenly:
That's Brock Nelson burying a feed from Josh Bailey, simple as can be. And here again, the Penguins' defensemen are fine. New York's Matt Martin had just dumped the puck to the Pittsburgh end boards, and Riley Sheahan had a clear step on Bailey, while Johnson waited behind the net for the pass everyone had been expecting.
But when Sheahan put on the brakes in an attempt to, one, keep from getting plastered into the glass and, two, make his own play, Bailey smartly reached from the back, pried away the puck and darted to the right.
Sheahan wasn't around after this one, but Johnson told me the sequence took all concerned, including Sheahan, by surprise.
"We were talking about it on the bench," Johnson said, "and we still weren't sure how he got that puck."
Neither am I, but he did, and it was 2-0. Dominik Simon and Crosby, continuing their chemistry from Vancouver, tied it within the next five minutes, but the Islanders took the lead for good at 9:32 of the second on this gimme putt for Martin:
This was just plain nuts. Casey Cizikas, who might as well stamp his name on the pucks when he plays the Penguins, tried to chase down a stretch pass that had been tipped upward off the reaching stick of Derek Grant in the neutral zone. Here again, every man is marked. But when Olli Maatta slides across to pursue the puck, it skips off one of the stanchions dividing the panes of plexiglass and pops right down onto Cizikas' blade ... with Maatta turned the wrong way, and Jamie Oleksiak instantly thrust into a two-on-one down low.
"That's a hard one to break down, you know?" Oleksiak would say, and he meant the whole game, not just that goal. "There was nothing really glaring. We didn't give up a whole lot. But what we did give up ... it went in."
Sullivan took special exception to this one.
"They got a little bit of puck-luck there," he said. "The puck goes off the stanchion and catches Olli by surprise. We had numbers back. It wasn't like it was an odd-man situation. It was one of those types of games, where the puck takes that bounce and we get caught on the outside rather than protecting the inside of the ice."
Even the Islanders weren't disputing it: It was one of those. And probably not more.
These teams will meet again Thursday night in Brooklyn. All else being equal, this process for the Penguins should produce another Canada-like result. And since it'll be witnessed by about as many fans as can be crammed into Barclays Center's infamous pickup truck, a lot of additional burden will be lifted, as well.
There will always be so much more to remember from this one than the score, anyway.
Myself, I'll settle for seeing Crosby, Malkin, Murray, Kessel, even Mario Lemieux and so many others spending extra time -- more than a half-hour after the game -- to talk with the police officers, to pose for pictures, to shake hands or just say thanks.
"We all talked about it before the game," Matt Cullen would say, still wearing the same stoic expression of most everyone in the building, it seemed. "We've all been following it very closely and, obviously, everybody is extremely emotional right now. We hurt like everybody else here. This is our hometown. We all love Pittsburgh. ... It makes you think about family and what's important, that's for sure."
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins vs. Islanders, PPG Paints Arena, Oct. 30, 2018 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS