I wasn't sure Kris Letang would answer it.
Although that, more than anything, should tell you how much rust everyone's got to shake off because, in hindsight, there's no way he wouldn't have.
My question for him yesterday: Of all the defense corps he's experienced in Pittsburgh, three of which won Stanley Cup championship, four of which reached the Final, where might the current one rank?
"Well, it's a pretty good one," he began without hesitation but maybe also buying himself some time. At least that was my thought, as most athletes hate having to rank anything related to themselves or their teammates, present and former.
"Obviously, we have veteran guys like Schultzie, Jack, Dumo, myself. We also have guys like Johnny and Petey that are becoming really good defensemen. We have Riikola. We're pretty fortunate to have those young guys."
For the hockey-nickname-impaired, those were, in order, Justin Schultz, Jack Johnson, Brian Dumoulin, John Marino, Marcus Pettersson and Juuso Riikola. And he left out, surely by accident, Chad Ruhwedel.
Finally, he got to it.
"I think it's a well-balanced D-corps for the perspective of offense and defense. I rank them probably in the top two. One or two, probably."
Hm. Worth the wait.
But it also had me wondering if the thought that sparked the somewhat spontaneous question -- motivated mostly by watching the Penguins' defensemen snuff out their forwards at every turn through the first two days at training camp here inside the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex -- might have had historical merit.
First, though, some of that snuffing:
Make sure you watch that with the sound up. The final sound you'll hear is Evgeni Malkin's stick slamming angrily against the far glass, this after Marino and Pettersson had shut him down on a third consecutive rush. And they were hardly alone. It's been the most common occurrence in camp.
I brought this up with Pettersson after the session, asking if these defensemen only get better by facing the forwards they do in practice.
"Oh, yeah, for sure," he answered. "It's good to have that every day. We get it all season long. Our leadership group does a great job of setting the pace in practice, and like you said, the line rushes today ... it's awesome for us to get work like that."
Not as awesome for the forwards, apparently.
Did you know the Penguins allowed the third-fewest shots per game in the NHL through the regular season at 29.7?
Or that they allowed the fifth-fewest high-danger scoring chances per game at 7.8?
Anyway, back to the historical merit: I swung back into time to list all of the defensemen who logged 15-plus playoff games for each of the four teams that reached the Final:
• 2008: Letang, Sergei Gonchar, Rob Scuderi, Brooks Orpik, Hal Gill, Ryan Whitney
• 2009: Letang, Gonchar, Scuderi, Orpik, Gill, Mark Eaton
• 2016: Letang, Brian Dumoulin, Justin Schultz, Ben Lovejoy, Ian Cole, Olli Maatta, Trevor Daley
• 2017: Dumoulin, Schultz, Cole, Maatta, Daley, Ron Hainsey
OK, the last couple are easy to eliminate, with all due respect to those men being richly deserving of the rings they're wearing. The 2016 team that beat the Sharks was built infinitely more on a fierce forecheck than anything defense-oriented. And the 2017 team, while commendably led by Schultz and Dumoulin, didn't get a single game out of Letang due to injury.
That rewinds back to the two teams that went head-to-head with the Red Wings, and that's where it gets sticky. Although I didn't have the chance to follow up with Letang for which might have been his other corps in competition with the current one, it's fairly easy to see it was likely that first one up there from 2008. Gonchar was still supremely skilled at age 33, there were three defensive stalwarts in Scuderi, Orpik and Gill, and Whitney was a former first-round pick. Also, for what it's worth, Letang was only 20 years old, so all those guys might've seemed larger than life.
But were they better than this group?
Eh, to borrow Letang's own term, "probably." At least within the era. In the much faster NHL of today, where mobility on the blue line is prized like never before, that group might have been badly exposed. But then, that's not how era comparisons work.
Regardless, his broader point stands: The current group -- for sure the top five -- is right up there.
Dumoulin's a superior skater with outstanding defensive skills and better puck skills than most might appreciate, that on top of being a more vocal leader than most might know. He's so much more than Letang's partner and, if anyone hadn't realized that before, the gaping hole left in his lengthy absence during this very season should've served as a painful reminder.
Schultz hasn't been his best self in a great while, undoubtedly due to the long recovery from that ugly broken leg in late 2018. But he's made strides, figuratively and literally since then, and was very much coming around before the coronavirus pause. At his best, he's still capable of being the No. 1 defenseman who took Letang's place in 2017 and who, fittingly, set up Patric Hornqvist's championship-clinching goal in Nashville.
Marino and Pettersson ... I feel strongly enough about these two kids, as well as the decision by Mike Sullivan and Jacques Martin to unite them for these playoffs, that I've whipped up a whole podcast segment on it today:
Johnson ... is what he is. He'll never match the value of the six-year contract Jim Rutherford gave him, but he'll also never be anywhere near as abysmal as his legion of local detractors will describe. The truth lies somewhere between the two, with the added variable that his coaches and teammates love and respect him and what he brings.
Which leaves the lead actor, of course.
I'm of the view that Letang's the greatest defenseman in franchise history, in large part because no one anywhere can name one more accomplished. (Really, good luck with it. Because Dave Burrows, a stalwart defensive defenseman in the 1970s, can't touch Letang's resume. Randy Carlyle won the team's only Norris Trophy in 1981 entirely by feasting off points on a record-setting but gimmicky power play. And neither Paul Coffey nor Larry Murphy spent nearly enough of a portion of their careers in Pittsburgh to qualify.)
That said, I'm also of the view that Letang might be the most mercurial performer in franchise history, surpassing even Alexei Kovalev in that category. Because his skill can tantalize as much as his mental errors can get him demonized. And to the latter, it's far worse than anything Kovalev ever heard, since Kovalev's gaffes were up front and didn't generally wind up in his own net.
Unlike with Johnson, though, the truth lies a lot closer to the great than the terrible. Letang's stamina rivals that of a peak-era Sergei Zubov, he's the team's all-time top-scoring defenseman with 537 points in 808 games, he's always built his game from the back out -- something Orpik once told me to watch, and I never forgot it -- and, oh, yeah, he's got more rings than anyone at his position in Pittsburgh history.
This season was shaping up to be among his finest, too, at age 33, with 15 goals, 29 assists, a 51.86 Corsi For persentage at five-on-five and an All-Star selection. There'd been talk, even from Rutherford, that his ice time might need to be cut, but he buried that in his own bullish way and averaged 25:43 per game, fourth-highest in the league.
As a result, it shouldn't surprise anyone that he reported to this camp in characteristically exemplary shape and has shown that in drill after drill.
It definitely didn't surprise Sullivan.
"He's got a jump in his step," Sullivan said yesterday. "When you have to play an 82-game schedule, it's a grind. Physically, it's a grind. ... I think Tanger handles it extremely well, but to have an opportunity to have a break like we had, maybe the silver lining in it is guys get an opportunity to get some rest."
Letang virtually echoed that.
"When you finish an 82-game season, sometimes you're tired a little bit or you have a couple bumps and bruises, injuries," he said. "This time, you kind of have the chance to heal and reenergize yourself. I think it's actually a good thing for our team."
Ultimately, what's best for the Penguins -- weird as this is to say on a team with Sidney Crosby and Malkin -- is the best version of Letang. It was true then, it was true in every year other than 2017, and it remains true now. And as such, any assessment about the quality of this defense corps will rise and fall with the quality of Letang's most recent shift.
This much is certain: Letang wants a fourth ring. He's cut from the same cloth as the two resident superstars, and it's no coincidence they're visibly carrying the same drive into these playoffs. All three have been flying through drills these first two days, even the mundane ones.
I asked Letang what it would mean to him and, by extension, to their little group.
"It would be unbelievable," he answered. "I think just winning a championship is something that is extraordinary. You grew up as a kid, and you just wanted to play in the NHL. When you have the chance to be on a team like ours and to be successful like we've been, to have another championship would solidify what we've been able to accomplish in Pittsburgh. It would mean a lot."
After a slight pause, he added, "It would mean like all the others, I would say."
Right. In the top one or two, probably.
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