No one ever credits the coaches.
Not even the coaches will do that, come to think of it.
Well, on this wonderfully wintry Sunday at PPG Paints Arena, after the Penguins cut down the Hurricanes, 3-1, in an encounter that was every bit as critical as it was ... uh, catatonically dull ... I'm here to credit Mike Sullivan, Jacques Martin, Mark Recchi and the complete staff for sticking it to their Carolina counterparts with one sweet, subtle adjustment.
Blink and you'll miss it ...
Spot any commonality there?
If not, don't feel bad. I didn't pick up on it immediately, either. But eventually, it began to add up.
Those three sequences up there marked the first three times the Hurricanes dumped the puck deep into the Pittsburgh zone. In each event, including the couple where Matt Murray settles it, the first defenseman on the scene -- in order, Jack Johnson, Justin Schultz and Marcus Pettersson -- appears to be heading the way he's skating ... only to reverse the puck back from whence he came to a waiting partner.
Why?
Tip: Watch the white sweaters.
"They're a hard forechecking team, and we wanted to keep them guessing a little bit," Johnson explained to me afterward. "We thought we could open up some ice that way."
"They like to cut the rink in half," Pettersson would add at a nearby stall. "So we went to the other half."
It's as simple as that. The Hurricanes prefer to flood the attacking zone with pressure, just as they prefer to flood the goaltender with pucks, leading the NHL in shots per game at 32.5. So any team trying to break out of its end against that flood is begging for trouble.
As Matt Cullen brought up, unsolicited, "We came out of our end clean. That was a big part of our game tonight. Our D did a heck of a good job breaking the puck out so that we could spend less time in our end and get on the offense and play down in their end."
I'm not making a bigger deal of this than it is, I promise. Rather, it's to underscore a couple pretty prominent points:
1. Sullivan isn't shy about changing.
He's got that stubborn rep, sure, and there are times he's earned it, for better or worse. His system is his system, and there aren't many meaningful deviations. But he's also shown to be capable of applying the right wrinkle at the right time, particularly when the games are the biggest.
2. 'This was the biggest game of the season. By far.'
That was from Patric Hornqvist, beaming almost as brightly as when he scored his first even-strength goal since the eighth-century Viking conquests, captured in the Matt Sunday photo atop this column. And he was hardly wrong. Had the Penguins lost, they'd have put their very Stanley Cup playoff standing in peril, never mind falling into a wild card position and possibly facing the Lightning or Capitals in the first round. As it is, it's sure looking like the Islanders, maybe even with home ice.
So yeah, give it up for those who got it going.
Piecing together what I could, the process was set in motion Friday morning, less than 24 hours after the 3-1 loss to the Predators. That outcome and that opponent had no impact, though. This was all about the Hurricanes. This was akin to a playoff, as the coaches had been stressing to the players, and they were going to handle it that way themselves. From there, it was taken to the players before practice at the Lemieux Sports Complex, displayed on video and, ultimately, drilled out on the ice.
Who thought of it?
Eh, I tried, but neither the head coach nor one of his assistants would assign specific credit. They're like that. They stick together, and it's all a collective thing. Which is cool.
Me being me, though, I crossed over into Carolina territory to ask head coach Rod Brind'Amour how much it affected the Hurricanes.
"Well, they're good," he began before conceding, "They did some reverses. They did some things. But really, we were just slow to get going. Once we got going, I thought it was pretty good."
That's fair, but by then, it was 2-0 on twin strikes by the fourth line. And the Hurricanes were so thrown off for so long that their prodigious shot machine didn't register a single one in the second period until nearly halfway through.
That's the game right there.
• To Brind'Amour's point about the second half, sorry, the Hurricanes wound up with 38 shots principally because they teed up 20 in the third period, 18 of those after Hornqvist had made it 3-0. The Penguins' posture was bound to be big-time different with such a lead.
• How good were the Penguins defensively?
Back to the Viking ...
• While focused on defense, never forget the real variable with this group is always the forwards. And the gold star on this count goes to Adam Johnson on Cullen's goal.
Kid coughed up the puck in the Carolina zone, pushed off a little too easily. But he put that world-class speed to good use, soaring back to the Pittsburgh blue line to apply enough pressure that Brian Dumoulin could step up for the pokecheck. Johnson corralled it from there and banked ahead to Cullen for the two-on-one:
"I felt like I needed to come back hard after a bad turnover," Johnson told me. "I knew Cully'd be coming back hard, so I just chipped it up to speed, and he did the rest."
When I retorted that it really wasn't "a bad turnover," he acknowledged being a bit tough on himself, but that's a sensitive area. He's a slight dude at 175 pounds, and getting knocked off the puck isn't a rep he wants.
"I've got to be stronger on that," he said.
• More defense: This might have been the Penguins' smoothest showing with breakouts in weeks, and no, not just because Brian Dumoulin was conducting a one-man clinic on creative ways to exit the zone.
Watch this:
That's Cullen taking the man, Dumoulin niftily bypassing him with the backhand breakout up to Bryan Rust, and one-touched across to Jake Guentzel.
That's beautiful hockey.
• It's not that Jim Rutherford's numb to advanced analytics. Everything I've heard strongly suggests the man embraces all the information he can.
But to fully understand why he acquired both Johnson and Erik Gudbranson, despite overwhelming empirical evidence against either, it's imperative to know that, from what I've been told, he and the coaching staff valued a physical element lower in the defensive zone toward their overall possession metrics and toward protecting their goaltender. They saw each as one piece of five in this regard, but they really, really wanted that piece.
So when hits like these occur ...
... with Johnson savaging Sebastian Aho, and Gudbranson doing likewise to Warren Foegele, they'll make the highlights, and they'll draw the usual glares down the nose about how hits don't matter anymore. And they definitely don't in some cases. But the hit on Aho came while short-handed and resulted in a clear for the Penguins. And Gudbranson's also brought a change of possession.
In baseball, the analytics community long ago took to abusing the term "objective" to describe their observations, even though so many of them were rooted primarily in wanting to be right about a given thing, then standing behind it even when wrong. One would hope the hockey analytics community will be far more open-minded as more data permeates the culture.
There's absolutely a value to hitting.
• My favorite Murray save of his 37 came midway through the second:
Foegele did well to sneak a wrister through both a sliding Gudbranson and Pettersson, probably an over-commit on the former's part. But Murray not only makes the save but also pounces on the puck with Brock McGinn hanging right in his face if there'd been a rebound.
That's a goaltender in complete command. Which is where Murray's been for months now.
• My favorite Murray moment came as soon as the locker room opened, when we all witnessed this:
1967-1972.
2015-current.
Les Binkley and Matt Murray met up in the Penguins locker room after tonight's matchup. Goalies stick together. pic.twitter.com/6jQTXRcked
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) April 1, 2019
There can only be one first, and Les Binkley -- "Only the Lord saves more than Binkley!" as the famous sign read at the Civic Arena -- will always be the franchise's inaugural goaltender. He hasn't been around much since retiring from scouting duties. Great to see him.
• Hornqvist had his breakthrough. Phil Kessel's next. His 68.42 Corsi For percentage was by far the best of any skater on either side, and it's been part of a general upward trend for him in all facets. What he needs most is to shoot more, but what he needs almost as much -- I'll say this because he can't -- is to face some dubious goaltending to get that confidence back.
Hello, Detroit!
• The Penguins will take out the Islanders in five.
Wait, we're not allowed to talk about that yet, right?
• OK, so work remains. The Red Wings are deeply flawed defensively, but they've got a bunch of speed and skill up front. In fact, they've won five in a row, not least of which was a 6-3 slaughter of the Bruins last night on home ice, fueled by an Anthony Mantha hat trick and this mindboggling, blind pass by Dylan Larkin:
Eyes? Overrated body part to use for @Dylanlarkin39. pic.twitter.com/LJmaDQt1wr
— NHL (@NHL) April 1, 2019
Boston's Brad Marchand was moved to tell reporters there, "I think we probably got a little overconfident tonight, and we can't do that. We weren't tight enough, and that's a team with a lot of speed and skill, and they took advantage of us."
Nothing would serve the Penguins better in these final three games than to use these opponents to set a playoff norm for defending.
Kind of like this one.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins vs. Hurricanes, PPG Paints Arena, March 31, 2019 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS
