Kovacevic: Penguins' toughness isn't the type worn on a sweater sleeve

Look, I couldn't care less about the Senators, any more than anyone else outside Canada's capital. 

I'm also not all that interested in how the Penguins pretty much sleepwalked through staving them off, 6-4, on this Thursday night inside PPG Paints Arena. There've been a couple concerning lulls of late, sure, but nothing that can't be cured by a routine clampdown.

What did interest me was this:

No, not the season's lamest fight. But rather, that it might lead to more snarly stuff and, in turn, something of a test.

That waste of a minute between Brian Boyle and Austin Watson in the first period followed some early pushing and shoving, not to mention Boyle flattening Watson's teammate, Jacob Bernard-Docker, just before that in what really appeared to be a blind collision. And from there, the Senators showed themselves to be as curiously abrasive and annoying as any NHL team in the year 2022. They'll still throw a hit just to throw a hit, as opposed to pursuing a puck, their average of 38.8 hits per game leading the league. They'll still jaw and jab and poke and prod and all that other frozen-tundra farm-boy cultural nonsense, their 10.8 penalty minutes per game also leading the league. They'll still fight just to fight, their 17 fighting majors ranking third. They'll even still send a fourth-line enforcer over the boards for the final faceoff of a lost cause to ... oh, I'll get to that one in a bit.

Anyway, this had the makings, amid the broader mess, of a useful exercise.

The Penguins were fresh off a six-game road trip in which they won four, capped by a resounding rally Monday night in Las Vegas against the best opponent they'd see out there, and what more telling challenge could await here for the clichéd first-game-back-after-a-long-road-trip than an opponent checking off the complete Ottawa hat trick of being abrasive, annoying and awful?

There'd be low expectations, high tempers and, hey, what could go wrong?

Well, as it turned out, most everything. The Senators would pepper away with 69 shot attempts, 32 in the first period alone, including 43 shots on goal and 17 high-danger chances. If not for Tristan Jarry's 39 saves, Mike Matheson's two goals and an assist, additional goals by Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Dominik Simon, then Jake Guentzel's empty-netter that finally flicked off the alarms after a four-goal lead had been frittered away to one ... yeah.

As Mike Sullivan worded it through what might've been gritted teeth, "I don't think we had our best game. I mean, fortunately, we found a way to win. I think our guys had a lot of finish. But we know it wasn't our best."

Nope. But there was lots to love in that other category, and I'll give appropriate stick taps even if I do so alone.

D.J. Smith, Ottawa's coach, emerged with a clear plan to have his players go at Kris Letang. That's also as old-school as it gets. Think Bob Errey and Troy Loney going at Raymond Bourque and Brian Leetch back when that tactic was common. Crush the other guys' top D-man, the thinking went, and they can't get started. And my goodness, did it ever work.

Hockey's changed, though. They call charging penalties -- more often, anyway -- in 2022. They emphasize skill, skating and possession. 

And even when this happens to Letang, as someone can be expected to try again in the playoffs, as volatile as he can be, he's eminently capable of responding in kind. So the Senators getting by far the best of Letang and his partner Brian Dumoulin at five-on-five -- they had 33 shot attempts to the Penguins' 10 while those two were on the rink -- didn't resonate as much in this context as this did:

Letang scrapped, hacked and whacked all night, in addition to throwing the evening's most belligerent -- and clean and purposeful -- check with a shoulder to the glass on Clark Bishop.

He stood up for himself. Kept playing. Kept being the star that he is, even on an overall off-night, in assisting on Sid's goal to extend his career-best points streak to nine games -- two goals, 12 assists -- while also record a career-best nine blocked shots.

Similarly, Sid and Geno put home sparkling goals punctuated by energetic celebrations, maybe befitting their own level of irritation with the Senators.

"I think we just keep playing hard. I think it kind of fires us up," Bryan Rust responded when I asked how the Penguins handled this. "I think you can see some guys on our team play with emotion. They get upset. They get mad. They play harder. I think we can channel that energy in the right direction. I think we did a decent job of that. And I think if we can channel that in the right direction, that's only gonna make us harder to play against."

He's right, of course. And he'd have been just as right in 2016 or 2017, when the Capitals, Blue Jackets and other playoff opponents tried to run them out of buildings only to wind up on the wrong side of handshake lines.

Which is why, other than Jim Rutherford's insanity in forfeiting a first-round pick for Ryan Reaves, the Penguins' stance through Sullivan's tenure has been consistent: The real toughness comes in remembering the best way to hurt that abrasive, annoying opponent.

Which he reiterated, essentially, when I brought it up after this game:

"Well, as I say to our guys all the time, we want to play to our strengths," Sullivan came back. "You fight the fights you know you can win. And we're at our very best when we play between the whistles. In my tenure here, there've been lots of teams that have taken that approach."

Meaning the one Ottawa just tried.

"But we know we can win. We can win the game playing a certain way, and we need a certain discipline and a certain resilience to make sure that that that focus goes undeterred."

Couldn't agree more.

So, in the same breath, please forgive my two-faced follow-up here in stating, with full gusto, that there's only way to answer garbage like this:

That's Brady Tkachuk, who didn't fall far from his old man's tree, taking a flagrant run at John Marino in the final 20 seconds. After Guentzel's empty-netter. With multiple strides, as the above circle illustrates. With stick held high. With full force, as the crash into the glass confirms. With a potential target who, in that moment, had zero NHL fights on his ledger.

Make it one:

Marino won't get a W on that card. He might not have landed a single punch compared to the couple of haymaker lefts that came from Tkachuk. But the hockey culture hasn't shifted so seismically that players don't know who's a willing target and who isn't. And Marino, in this event, skated off with his head held high and, apparently none the worse for wear.

His teammates both appreciated and applauded, with Simon awarding him the team's silly helmet after the game even though others contributed far more on the scoreboard:

Sorry, but that's cool.

Almost as cool as what happened when Smith sent Watson over the boards for the final faceoff. For any readers born after the advent of running water and electricity, this is what NHL coaches used to do when trying to send a message that, even though their team will lose that game, they're not about to take it lying down.

The sharpest set of eyes on the rink spotted this and, rather than racing off in abject terror, Sid tailed Watson all the way from the bench area to the far side of the rink where the puck was to be dropped. Head tilted, smiling caustically, as if to say, 'Really, dude? Do you know what century this is?'

The puck did drop, a few final unpleasantries were exchanged, the stripes spread everyone apart, and only one team enjoyed the rest of its evening.

JUSTIN K. ALLER / GETTY

Tristan Jarry stops the Senators' Alex Formenton on a third-period penalty shot Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena.

• Jarry was, in fact, terrific. Taylor Haase has that.

• Sid's goal, a roofed backhander off a power-play rush, was his first non-empty-netter in eight games, his second in the past 15 games. And to these eyes, it still looks as simple as needing to shoot more. The five shots he registered here marked just the fourth time in those 15 games he had more than three.

• There isn't much I can offer regarding Matheson's performance that this visual collection of five sequences wouldn't supersede:

Pardon the imbalanced comparison here, but I've long likened him to Alexei Kovalev, not in terms of talent or achievement, but it terms of attitude: The game's just easy for the guy. And when he's feeling it, this is how it looks. Mercurial beyond words.

• Tell me I'm not the only one to notice that once-unstoppable Evan Rodrigues has gone six games without a point.

Not to make too big a deal of it, but that's exactly the kind of thing that can't happen over the long haul. This is a good team without Rodrigues and others who rose up in the absence of stars. But it's a hell of a team when all that depth is firing.

That's not on Sid and/or Geno being back. It's not on Sullivan. It's on those players.

• The Senators' three-goal rally was lousy from the Penguins' perspective. Obviously. Their shot total was equally lousy. Equally obvious. And I could engage in all kinds of nuance, such as how their showing specifically between the blue lines might've been their worst all season -- "We've got to clean that up," Simon replied when I brought that up -- it really comes back to that cliche.

Ask me again in a week or so if there's been any meaningful regression. Not feeling that yet.

• Feeling more like this, to be honest:

DKPS

Three points out of first, with a game in hand. And nobody in that range worth fearing.

• The Flyers have lost 10 in a row. For the second time this season. And they've played 40 games.

I've got nothing substantive to add to this.

• Tremendous scene in the first period with the Matt Murray tribute video, although he didn't suit up for the Senators. He watched this ...

... then teared up at least a little up here in the press box. Good for him. Good for Pittsburgh. That's how you treat champions.

• Neat to see Tom Werner, Fenway Sports Group's chairman, up in the box with Ron Hextall and Brian Burke again. No reason for this, but I'd thought his visit to Pittsburgh a couple weeks ago was a one-off. Apparently not.

• As a total aside, there are few things in this life that bring back my childhood like going to a hockey game in Pittsburgh with snow on the ground:

DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS

Fans line up in front of PPG Paints Arena's main entrance on Fifth Avenue before faceoff Thursday evening.

THE ESSENTIALS

• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics

THE THREE STARS

As selected at PPG Paints Arena:

1. Mike Matheson, Penguins
2. Josh Norris, Senators
3. Evgeni Malkin, Penguins

THE HIGHLIGHTS

THE INJURIES

• Jason Zucker, forward, was put on IR on Thursday and is considered week-to-week. It's the same nagging lower-body injury that had him out before his return in Las Vegas.

• Louis Domingue, goaltender, was put on IR after he was struck in the foot by a puck in Thursday's morning skate. Sullivan did not have an idea of a timeframe for Domingue as of Thursday night. Taylor saw Domingue using crutches prior to the game.

• Drew O'Connor, forward, was put on LTIR retroactive to Jan. 15. He's week-to-week with an upper-body injury.

THE LINEUPS

Sullivan’s lines and pairings:

Guentzel-Crosby-Rust
Heinen-Malkin-Kapanen
Simon-Carter-Rodrigues
Boyle-Blueger-McGinn

Dumoulin-Letang
Pettersson-Marino
Matheson-Ruhwedel

And for Smith's Senators:

Tkachuk-Norris-Batherson
Formenton-Stutzle-Sanford
Paul-Gambrell-Watson
Bishop-Tierney-Gaudette

Chabot-Bernard-Docker
Holden-Zub
Brannstrom-Brown

THE SCHEDULE

No time to rest. It's off to Columbus for the season's first meeting with the Blue Jackets, one of the Metro opponents they'll need to bury to ensure a playoff berth. Because of the back-to-backs, no morning skate. Sullivan will speak at 5 p.m. Faceoff's at 7:08 p.m. Taylor and I are making the trip.

THE CONTENT

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