CHICAGO -- A slumping hockey player with a scoring history is bound to score ... in bunches.
That's the sport's time-tested sentiment, and it pops to life on rinks worldwide. Almost as wide as the eyes that lead up to that breakout goal.
Bryan Rust's hat trick Wednesday night at the United Center wound up for naught in the immediate context, thanks to most of his fellow Penguins casually admiring his handiwork from afar in a sickly 6-3 loss to the Blackhawks, the NHL's worst team. But in the broader context, it could mean plenty for a roster starving for secondary scoring.
"All that matters right now is our team's success," Rust would say afterward, every bit as subdued as the scene around him in the visiting locker room. "That's one we'd definitely like to have back."
At the same time, goals have been scarce across the board, and Rust still had stood out with one through 29 games. Oh, he'd dig and grind and fly horizontally toward the crease and whatever else, and he'd even get his share of golden chances, only to wind up shaking his head as he'd slowly skate back to the bench. This one went wide. That one was saved. Another clanged off the bar. There was even a whiff on an empty net along the way.
But at 18:40 of the first period ... well, watch Rust's eyes:
All kinds of other goodness contributed, not least of which was a smart pinch by Marcus Pettersson to preserve posession, then Riley Sheahan and Zach Aston-Reese outworking Duncan Keith and Henri Jokiharju behind the Chicago net.
That's when Rust swooped in for the stolen goods, swirled back through the left circle, took advantage of whatever Andreas Martinsen -- he's No. 29 up there -- could have been thinking in abandoning Rust ... and then he honest-to-gosh sized up the net.
Man, that's everything. Because, even as he takes the puck one more half-stride than necessary -- maybe hesitation, maybe working around a recovering Jokiharju's block attempt -- his chin is up, those eyes are wide, and he nails it.
Not just top shelf, either. Bar bleeping down.
I asked Rust how that felt, just that moment:
It was easy to see. And quickly, as his next goal came 5:46 into the second to tie the score at 2-2:
This was AHL-level goaltending by Corey Crawford in excessively respecting Derek Grant's ability to beat anyone -- at any level, including the AHL -- on a Guy Lafleur-style rush, so the rebound popped right back into the center slot for the easiest of putbacks by Rust. At the same time, credit Rust for busting away from Brent Seabrook upon gaining the Chicago blue line and for, you know, doing that thing he hadn't been doing for two months.
The hat trick, which amusingly drew a handful of hats to the ice from the capacity crowd, no doubt from Pittsburgh partisans, came at 19:03 of the third, and this, too, brought a tie:
Not much to this one, either. Olli Maatta does well to fake a slap shot from the point and draw a physical reaction from four of the five Chicago skaters. Seriously, freeze-frame to see the impact. That includes Seabrook, who first sets himself for a block on Maatta, then turns toward Rust once Maatta feeds down low. Meanwhile, Derick Brassard passes through the slot to offer a target and, thus, a distraction for Crawford.
Rust tries to pass toward Brassard, Seabrook twists and tips it behind Crawford.
Hey, they're all like Howitzers in the boxscore, right?
Rust raised both arms triumphantly and stood in one spot as his teammates congregated to congratulate him, striking for someone of his reserved personality. And when he got back to the bench, Mike Sullivan, who stuck by him unconditionally through the slump, offered a few words that visibly delighted him:
I'd love to share what was exchanged here, but trust me that no one was in the happy/chatty mood after this.
Maybe the coach was teasing him about the tons of other chances he'd already missed on a night when he'd wind up with eight shots and it honestly felt like he could have scored five or six?
"Oh, I know," Rust would reply later to a question about his chances. "Some nights, you can't get the puck. Nights like this, it just follows you around."
I did at least ask Sullivan what it meant to see Rust get rewarded:
A bit of background, this from the endless bank of knowledge that is noted hockey historian Bob Grove: Rust's hat trick was the second of his NHL career, the other having come Dec. 5, 2016, in Ottawa. This was the Penguins' first hat trick in this city since Mario Lemieux at old Chicago Stadium March 12, 1989. And this was the team's fifth hat trick already in 2018-19, the most in any season since six in 2009-10.
By the way, the next time one of the Penguins puts out a hat trick on the road, take the other team by a factor of two. Sidney Crosby's natural hat trick in Denver two weeks ago resulted in a loss by the same 6-3 count.
