CRANBERRY, Pa. -- It was nine whole days ago, way out in the Nevada desert, that Mike Sullivan appeared to leave his Penguins with the equivalent of an extended homework assignment.
“We have to find a way to become a team that has a clear identity of what it is and how we’re going to play, and then everybody has to buy into it," he told our Chris Bradford on that Saturday night in Las Vegas. "Everyone, to a man, has to buy into it."
The players, directly or otherwise, learned of that remark. They always do.
But here's what's funny: There really wasn't anywhere to go beyond that. Certainly not in terms of further learning.
"We never have to wonder about what our identity is in here," Matt Cullen would say yesterday after the team's return practice at the Lemieux Sports Complex. "That hasn't changed. That won't change. It's on us to make sure we commit to it, that's all."
That really is all.
Well, that and something else within the identity: These Penguins, and I mean these very 2018-19 Penguins rather than the totality of the Sullivan tenure, need to be physical.
No, not bruising. As Matt Murray artfully worded it Sunday, "We're not the type of team that's going to hit someone into the 10th row."
But they are the type of team that's got to have the puck to win. They're still fast, though not as fast as the 2016 Stanley Cup team that would overwhelm opponents in waves. They're still quick, too, as it relates to play creation and movement. And both those traits held true even during the struggles through the first two months of this season.
What was missing was the physical element required to win the puck in the first place.
This initially rose up in my thinking when the Penguins, no matter how they were performing overall, always seemed to fare well against those teams that tried to hit them, to poke them, to bring out their snarl. In almost each case -- Winnipeg, Boston, Columbus, Calgary, Washington -- that lit their fire a little. In fact, coincidence or not, the Penguins have gone a combined 7-1-1 against those five teams. And that's saying plenty, considering all five of those teams are each currently 10-plus games over .500.
A few weeks back, I canvassed the room in search of a single word to summarize how the team could improve. And it was Dominik Simon, and him alone, who used the word 'physical.'
I reminded him of this Sunday:
"We have to go hard. Just go hard."
The kid gets it.
He lives it, too. No one will confuse his finishing touch with that of Patrik Laine or even Patric Hornqvist, but his advanced metrics powerfully underscore his value to the roster: Through these first 48 games, his 54.98 Corsi For percentage -- representing the rate at which the Penguins generate scoring chances compared to chances allowed while he's on the ice -- is third-best on the team. Only Sidney Crosby's 56.52 and Jake Guentzel's 55.29 are better. And this despite Simon not doing much scoring on his own or staying on some set line that does that. He's bounced all over the place and just keeps doing his thing.
If you're at PPG Paints Arena tonight for the game against the Devils, keep a spare eye on him. Watch what he does. It's not easy to see on TV, but in person, all those little passes, those little movements to get open and, above all, the way he uses that 'surprisingly strong' frame, as Sullivan often calls it, to scratch and claw to win the puck ... all of that adds up.
There's a reason his teammates -- Crosby especially -- raved about him even before he finally buried a couple goals. There's a reason the coaching staff trusts him implicitly in all situations.
It's because this:
That's the 'identity' issue solved. Win the puck. Keep the puck. The rest takes care of itself with this group.
• The Devils won't have Taylor Hall tonight. He's been out since Christmas with an undisclosed injury, and he didn't accompany the team on its charter flight to Pittsburgh yesterday. Neither did Stefan Noesen, who's also hurt the Penguins in the past, and Ben Lovejoy.
But overlooking this team would be senseless on so many levels, not least of which is that New Jersey's claimed both meetings this season by counts of 5-1 and 4-2. As Jack Johnson acknowledged, "Those guys have had our number, no question."
On top of that, this reset schedule could be favorable in that the Penguins are offered a chance tonight to support their talk about being more consistent, regardless of opponent, and burying these banged-up Devils. From there, they'll be far better positioned to take on the NHL's premier team, the Lightning, Wednesday night. And then, the same applies to the weekend back-to-back with the Senators and Maple Leafs.
Start taking the points sitting there to be had.
• Murray will start this game. Murray needs to start Wednesday, too, given the challenge at hand. Casey DeSmith can have Ottawa, and then Murray should get his net back in Toronto, where he turned in one of his finest showings back in October.
He's the No. 1 goaltender. Let him run with it. Three of every four games is reasonable, even in a busy February.
• So the Jets again are kicking the tires on Derick Brassard, according to two reports out of Canada.
I don't think that'll happen. Kevin Cheveldayoff chased Brassard hard at the deadline a year ago, only to have the Golden Knights' George McPhee undercut him -- deliberately to keep Brassard from going to rival Winnipeg -- by helping the Penguins with the cap relief to add Brassard. Well, that worked out for Vegas, which did wind up meeting Winnipeg in the Western final, and it somehow worked out for the Jets, too, as their Plan B acquisition, Paul Stastny, proved to be a tremendous playoff performer.
Why Cheveldayoff would try that again makes zero sense, especially after being saved from himself once. The Jets are built around the rather intense personalities of Blake Wheeler, Mark Scheifele and Dustin Byfuglien, and Brassard would fit in Winnipeg like a January surfing competition.
• No matter what Crosby surely will tell us this morning after the skate, he wanted that All-Star tournament victory. And Kris Letang was very much in on it. I'm not taking no for an answer on this.
To understand Crosby, it's forever valuable to repeat Mike Babcock's iconic description of him in Sochi as "a serial winner." That's who he is. Competitive to the core. With all gears churning toward a single team-oriented goal. His legacy is lavished by individual brilliance, but it'll always be about all that winning. The three Stanley Cups. The two Olympic golds. The World Cup. Even comparatively small fare like this.
• Pretty neat that Crosby, Letang and Murray were joined by Garrett Wilson during the break in Wyoming. I'd written from California that Crosby and Wilson appeared to be hitting it off, and this might be another sign.
• Wilson's got zero NHL goals in 53 career games, including his 19 with the Penguins this season. That genuinely mystifies his teammates, who see him regularly flash soft-ish hands in practice. After he did that again yesterday in a couple drills, Murray told me, "He's going to score in this league. He's definitely capable."
More than once, he meant.
• As an aside, some of the Penguins' players hated NBC's silly puffy-cloud puck trail for the All-Star Game even more than I did. Which I was sure wasn't possible.
In case you mercifully missed it:
Sidney and the Metro are feeling it!
Stream the finale: https://t.co/h9NI82dt9e pic.twitter.com/UNVQFsmNei
— NHL on NBC (@NHLonNBCSports) January 27, 2019
If the network's looking for genius-level concepts to grow hockey ratings, here's one: Show games between good teams. Because games between good teams tend to have good players.
When it comes to the NFL, no network cares that Green Bay's about the size of Altoona. They just care that the Packers have Aaron Rodgers. But when it comes to the NHL, it's all Blackhawks, Rangers, Flyers, Bruins and, because the fan interest in Pittsburgh greatly outsizes our market, the Penguins, too. There's more to it. Hockey fans are like all other fans in that they want to see good teams and good players.
• The first-place Islanders are the phoniest thing the NHL's seen since the October version of the Sabres. They're averaging 28.2 shots per game, fourth-fewest in the league, and they've converted a wholly unnatural 10.5 percent of those. If it's John Tavares and some cast of All-Star snipers doing that, maybe I'm buying, but the Islanders don't have a player among the league's top 50 goal-scorers. That's got no chance of holding up. Same applies to Robin Lehner's obscene, unprecedented .931 save percentage. He's never finished a season above .920.
• The NHL distributed this graphic to the media this week to boast -- and rightfully so -- that scoring is at a three-decade high:
As much as I've ripped Gary Bettman when it was the reverse, that's exactly how much I'll applaud him, the officials and, sure, the coaches and players, too. Attacking hockey is first and foremost a mindset, and that can't be dictated from the league office.
For all the data above, though, no figure wowed me more than this: Of the 770 games played to date, 345 of them -- or 44.8 percent -- have seen a team overcome a deficit to win. And within that, 96 games have seen a team overcome a multiple-goal deficit to win. The former is the largest such percentage in league history, and the latter is topped only by the 1985-86 and 1987-88 seasons, the heyday of Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky and firewagon hockey.
Congrats to all concerned. I mean that. It's a hell of an accomplishment, and this beautiful sport's all the better for it.
