Kovacevic: Rapid-fire puck movement has power play 'humming'

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Mike Sullivan isn't exactly big on bombast.

And yet, when he strode into the visitors' locker room Sunday night at Nationwide Arena, with his team down a goal at the second intermission, he shared with his players a strikingly specific, semi-bold prediction about what was still to come.

As Sullivan would later recall, "We felt like our power play had a lot of really good looks and that, if we were going to get another one, we felt like we were going to score. I actually said that to them after the second period. And those guys did a terrific job. They ended up getting the job done for us.

The first unit, he meant. And did they ever.

But before I get to that, and before I get to everything else here that built into the Penguins burrowing by the Blue Jackets, 3-2, allow me, please to address my usage of the prefix semi- up there.

See, there's only so bold that a coach's prediction of a power-play goal can be when that coach's players are Hockey Globetrotter-ing all over the attacking zone like this:

Watch it. Don't skip it. 

Then watch it again, this time following the touch counter added by our video ace Eddie Provident. The one that shows 18 uninterruped touches in 24 seconds. The one that shows a mind-warping seven touches in the four seconds right after zone entry. The one that shows three of those touches being of the one-time type.

Another sequence, this from the second:

Once the Columbus blue line gets gained, that's nine touches in 13 seconds. At the perimeter but also penetrating the box.

OK, so maybe even semi- was too strong.

Regardless, it sprang to life with 8:08 left in regulation, capped by Evgeni Malkin's tap-in that tied the score, 2-2:

My goodness.

Seven touches total after the zone entry. Four in two freaking seconds leading into the goal. And all five skaters had a touch -- Geno to Kris Letang, back to Geno, across to Sidney Crosby, down low to Jake Guentzel, into the slot for Bryan Rust, then back-door to Geno -- which really ought to be an achievement that comes with some catchy nickname.

The full Magellan?

"Great execution," was what Sid called it, and that sounds about right.

Look, this'd be no big deal if it were one night. The Blue Jackets are a bit better than the NHL average on the penalty-kill -- 13th at 81.1% -- so it's possible they weren't as efficient as they'd prefer. 

But this all really began, in no coincidence, with the return to full health of PP1, notably that of Geno. Since Jan. 1, the Penguins' power play ranks:

• 1st in NHL at 0.96 goals/game
• 2nd with 28.9% success rate
• 3rd with 128 shots on goal
• 3rd with 225 shot attempts
• 1st with 63 high-danger chances
• 2nd with 18.75 shooting percentage

And a fair amount of that, at least from this press-box perspective, is founded in some of the best passing quickness I've ever witnessed from a Pittsburgh power play. That's not to suggest this is the best power play in franchise history or anything close -- there's an entire wing of the Hockey Hall of Fame that'd rightly dispute it -- but I'm referring solely to the passing quickness.

I asked Sullivan about this afterward:

"Yeah, I think it's humming right now," Sullivan replied. "When they go over the boards, there's a certain confidence level that they're gonna score. We can feel it on the bench. They're just doing a really good job. A lot of the little things. They're retrieving pucks. They're getting to loose pucks. Their entries have been much better, which has given us an opportunity to establish zone time. And when those guys get that, it's just a matter of time."

Sullivan also credited Todd Reirden, the assistant coach responsible for the power play who hasn't been able to climb behind the bench since knee surgery Feb. 14.

"Todd's done a great job giving them the game plan. He's not here now, but he's recording the power-play meetings in the pre-scout sessions, and we play the video for them in the coaches' room. That's their power-play meeting. So he's still doing a lot of work behind the scenes to get these guys on the same page. But the players themselves are always the guys that deserve the bulk of the credit."

Maybe more in this case than the norm, given the enormity of the experience at hand. All anyone needs to see to support that was on display here, with all five players bunching up frequently before faceoffs. It's not quite self-governance, but it's close.

Because of that, I asked Rust, too, if the rapid-fire passing was rooted in a conscious decision:

"Anytime you can move it quicker and efficiently, I think that pulls a PK out of their structure more," he replied. "And I think the more and more we work together, the more video we watch, the more comfortable we get, it's just gonna keep kind of building."

Of Geno's beauty, he added, "I think that was just our chemistry coming together there. We talked about a lot of things out there and a lot of possibilities, and I think everybody kind of just knew where everyone was going to be. It just worked out nicely."

Blink and you'll miss what's next.

GETTY

Sidney Crosby out-muscles the Blue Jackets' Jack Roslovic to score past Elvis Merzlikins.

• The captain was outstanding. Not just here but all weekend, including the shutout of the Rangers. I hope you'll give my podcast at the bottom of this file -- dedicated wholly to that subject -- a listen.

In addition to the standard 200-foot effort ...

... he out-hustled -- no, out-muscled Jack Roslovic just outside the Columbus crease to ram home the rebound winner with 2:14 left:

"Sid's goal at the end," Sullivan would say, "I just think it personifies the resilience that this team showed tonight,"

Taylor Haase has more on the winner.

• No controversy there, by the way, at least not as I saw it. Once Elvis Merzlikins exits the blue paint to try to catch that airborne puck, everyone's got an equal right to play it.

• Taylor's also got more on Casey DeSmith's continuing rebound, plus Mark Friedman actually making the save of the game.

• Tap of the stick to Sullivan for calling timeout on that climactic power play to get his main guys a breather and keep them out longer.

"I think we were just trying to regroup a little bit," Sid would say. "We knew that was a big power play, and Geno had just been out there before that in drawing the penalty."

• In back-to-back games, the Penguins are now 5-1-1 in the first, 4-2-1 in the second. Which is impressive enough, but for this sequence add into the mix the "emotional" victory over New York -- that was Sullivan's term Saturday -- and a comparatively blah opponent here, and it's that much more meaningful.

What changed from the three-game losing streak, lowlighted by that 6-1 dud against the Devils, to this weekend?

"I just think we got back to playing the kind of hockey that we know brings us success," Sullivan would say.

Translation: Tighter.

"This is huge," Sid said. "We want to make sure we're playing the right way, and the last couple games, we have and we got rewarded."

• All most definitely didn't go well: Sid's goal was the first at even-strength by any forward in 10 periods. Power plays are awesome, but they can't supplant five-on-five offense for long. And in turn, feel free to pretend I'm reprinting all my usual complaints about the lack of secondary scoring.

• Save a special spot for a defenseman, too, as Brian Dumoulin's struggles continue.

• Mark Friedman can't come out of the lineup. He was given an opportunity, and he seized it this weekend.

Imagine if the same principal would apply to replacing one or more of the current unproductive forwards.

• These Blue Jackets aren't making anybody's playoffs. Yeah, it's neat that they opened February 7-1, but they were blanked by the Hurricanes three days ago, and now blew two points here, and they're 10 points behind the Capitals for the East's eighth and final playoff berth.

There just isn't enough here to overcome that.

"Probably as tough an ending as you can imagine," Columbus center Sean Kuraly would say. "Those sting."

• Geno's got at least one point in all but three of his 19 games, including a goal in four of his past five games. He was No. 1 star here, also having assisted on Chad Ruhwedel's goal in the first.

"You can see, the more he wants the puck and the more he has the puck, the more dangerous he is," Rust would say. "You can see, when he gets that little kind of hop-step going, that he's feeling it. He's been great lately, and I think he's just only going to get better." 

Anyone still see him as some chemistry-killer?

Hello?

• He's beloved, too:

• By the way, even though Geno was a star in both games over the weekend, he didn't meet with media, and that's not an accident. He's aware he'll be asked about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he saw from afar the backlash Alexander Ovechkin received following his own questioning on that front in D.C. last week, and he might well resort to issuing a written statement instead.

I probably shouldn't need to remind anyone that Russians the world over aren't safe -- and neither are their families -- when criticizing Vladimir Putin.

• I appreciate that this invasion is more momentous and more heinous than other examples I could give, but I also can't help but underscore that we only pepper Russian hockey players with this sort of stuff.

At the end of the day -- every single day -- they're just hockey players.

• If anyone wants to make a worthwhile difference, rather than wagging fingers at hockey players, follow the advice of Markiyan Kliuchkovskyi, a longtime subscriber to our site and former Pitt law student who's currently spending most of his days in bomb shelters in Lviv, Ukraine:

He's doing OK, by the way. I've been in touch with him every day.

GETTY

Casey DeSmith stops a one-timer by the Blue Jackets' Brendan Gaunce in the first period.

THE ESSENTIALS

• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule

THE THREE STARS

As selected at PPG Paints Arena:

1. Evgeni Malkin, Penguins C
2. Jack Roslovic, Blue Jackets C
3. Casey DeSmith, Penguins G

THE HIGHLIGHTS

THE INJURIES

• Mike Matheson, defenseman, sustained an upper-body injury Feb. 24. He's week-to-week.

• Teddy Blueger, center, has been on IR since undergoing surgery to repair a fractured jaw Jan. 24. He's expected to miss 6-8 weeks. He's practicing.

• Jason Zucker, left winger, has been on IR since undergoing core muscle surgery Jan. 25. He's week-to-week.

• Louis Domingue, goaltender, has been on IR since he was struck by a puck in the right foot at a morning skate Jan. 20. He's week-to-week.

THE LINEUPS

Sullivan’s lines and pairings:

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

Dumoulin-Letang
Pettersson-Marino
Friedman-Ruhwedel

And for Brad Larsen's Blue Jackets:

Nyquist-Jenner-Laine
Voracek-Roslovic-Bjorkstrand
Domi-Sillinger-Bemstrom
Gaunce-Kuraly-Danforth 

Gavrikov-Peeke
Kukan-Boqvist
Carlsson-Bayreuther

THE SCHEDULE

The team's off Monday, then practices the next two days, both at 11 a.m. in Cranberry, before flying to Tampa, Fla., and Raleigh, N.C., for back-to-back big-time games Thursday and Friday. Taylor will take the former, and I've got the latter.

THE CONTENT

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