"Juice," Mike Sullivan called it. And I loved it.
I'd asked what, if anything, he and/or his Penguins had absorbed in any intangible way from management's aggressive move to add Rickard Rakell from Anaheim at the NHL's trade deadline. And I'd asked this, on purpose, minutes after the first game that followed that deadline, a 5-1 blowout of the Blue Jackets on this Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena.
Because, you know, hit while it's hot. And this whole setting -- the move, Rakell's admirable debut, the W itself -- felt at least a little intertwined.
"When management goes out and they make a move like they did at the trade deadline, it just shows our group their faith in us and our ability moving forward," Sullivan came right back to my question. "I think it gives our team juice."
He raised both hands demonstratively.
"It gives me juice as the head coach, I'll tell you that."
Big smile there.
"And I think the players feel the same way. We believe we have a good team. We understand that the challenge ahead of us is difficult, and that we've got to go out and earn it every night. And we're going to attempt to do that. But when management does that ... their actions speak that they believe in this group. Just as our coaching staff believes in this group."
Anyone else?
Nah, not yet?
Yeah, that's the general sense I get. Even amid yet another winning streak -- this one of three games -- and a 39-16-9 record that's fourth-best in the NHL and all that "juice" having beaten an overachieving Columbus team to a pulp ... it all still feels very much on hold when it comes to the fan base.
Which is fine, because, in the interim, those of us who do see something blossoming here can keep highlighting beautiful goals such as this one that's got to be a top-fiver in Bryan Rust's career:
My goodness.
It's not the evisceration of Joonas Korpisalo at the end. It's not even the persistent push to preserve possession around Cole Sillinger, a forward somewhat clumsily sliding back to help. Rather, it's that athletic move with the raised right leg crossing the Columbus blue line to settle that aerial pass from Evgeni Malkin.
"That was a tremendous goal," Jake Guentzel would say. "It's just the way he scores goals now. He's come a long way. You're so happy to see him keep scoring like that. Special goal."
Rust's at 21 goals through 42 games. Still scoring once every two games.
Guentzel had two of his own, finishing a Sidney Crosby special ...
... then unwittingly having Sid bank one off his thigh inside the blue paint:
And just like that, he's at 31, topping the 30 plateau for the second time in his career.
"It's a cool number," Jake acknowledged. "To be able to get 30 goals in this league is pretty special. It's hard to score goals."
Radim Zohorna into a vacated net and Geno on a five-on-three scored the goals that sandwiched around these.
Otherwise, if I'm being honest, this was a bit of a bore. The opponent was overmatched and, regardless, the Penguins are pretty tough for any team to beat when they're pushing all the buttons they were pushing here.
Which, again, didn't come across as a coincidence. Because I've covered a bunch of these in my lifetime, these first games after an uplifting move at the deadline, and they tend to come with three benefits, as I see it:
1. New player's here and helps!
OK, so Rakell was exhausted from the red-eye flight out of California, as he'd concede afterward, and he'd drag around "heavy legs" while deployed on the left wing of Jeff Carter's third line. He'd wind up with no points and two shots.
But he hardly looked out of place, as Taylor Haase details.
2. That 'juice' thing.
It's validation. It's a warm-and-fuzzy. Everyone, from the top down, believes. See above.
3. The focus crystallizes.
I brought this up with Marcus Pettersson afterward, and he explained it far better than I could:
Catch that last part?
"We've talked a lot lately about just becoming a team," he'd say, referring to the weeklong 2-1 trip through Nashville, St. Louis and Glendale. "Now, we know what we're working with for the end of the regular season and going into the playoffs, so ... we've just got to get that feeling in the locker room that we can beat every team in this league if we play the right way."
Brought this up with Jake, too:
"I think, when you add a player of that caliber, it shows they want to win," he'd reply, referring to Rakell and management, in that order. "I think it puts us all on notice, that we have something special here. We've got build on this down the stretch. We've got to come together as a team as fast as we can."
He paused a second.
"It's gonna be a fun time."
Guess who else thinks so.
"When you're in a pretty deep playoff run, that's when you realize the reasons why you're playing," Rakell would say, referring to the Ducks, who are about to miss their fourth consecutive playoffs. "To have another chance of doing that, it's huge for me. Just coming here and getting the chance to play with all these great players, this great team ... I couldn't be more excited."
Anyone else now?
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JEANINE LEECH / GETTY
Rickard Rakell pauses during warmups Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena.
• I'd initially cringed at Rakell being on Carter's left wing, but Sullivan's explanation made sense -- "If we had put him in the top six tonight, it would have been a real tough challenge and maybe an unfair challenge" -- as did his further laying out that the coaching staff will consider other line options "over the next few days."
My cheat sheet: He needs to be Geno's right winger. And Rust needs to go back with Sid and Jake.
• Tristan Jarry's 26 saves brought a 32nd victory, tying the Lightning's Andrei Vasilevskiy for the NHL lead.
Can't state this often enough: The general managers are the ones who vote for the Vezina Trophy, and they -- way more than us writer types -- are smitten with success and durability. Jarry's also fourth with 50 games played, 49 of those as starts. The Rangers' Igor Shesterkin, the most commonly mentioned favorite in the media, has 40 games played.
• Lest the trade parade roll on without limits, the penalty-killers' first foray without Zach Aston-Reese saw the Blue Jackets score. With soft coverage at the top on Zach Werenski's point shot that set up Gustav Nyquist's poke.
The five forwards utilized when short-handed, by the way, were Teddy Blueger (more than anyone), Evan Rodrigues, Brian Boyle, Carter and Rust. It'd sure be nice if the latter didn't have to participate.
• Never, ever take him for granted:
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NHL
• Also not to be taken for granted: Rust. Sign him for all eternity to an endless stream of Bitcoin.
• Coolest stat of all: Zohorna's now played in 13 games, and he's yet to be on the rink for an opponent's goal. For real. And this spans 142 minutes, four seconds of ice time in which he's logged superb advanced analytics, notably a 59.46 Corsi For percentage at five-on-five that's second on the team only to Drew O'Connor's 59.64 through his 22 games early in the season.
And yet, the chance of either participating in Game 1 is about the same as that of the arena's security staff.
• Pettersson was made available to us for the first time since his healthy scratch a week ago in Nashville, the first of his Pittsburgh career.
Of that, he'd say, "I just tried to use it as a reset. I think I kind of got away from my game a little bit. I don't think I was awful, but we had seven D-men playing well, and it's going to be a healthy competition sometimes."
That's fair. He wasn't awful. If anything, he's had the most solid season of his career. But he was, as Sullivan suggested at the time, sat mostly because Mark Friedman was performing well. Friedman was the scratch in this one.
Nothing amiss with any of that. Always be looking over the shoulder.
• That goes double for this guy:
Amazing speed and skill there by Kasperi Kapanen, who continues to perform much better of late. And if Korpisalo hadn't come through with the breathtaking toe save at the end, it'd be the buzz of the game, even more than Rust's goal.
Let's hear it for "healthy competition," as Pettersson put it.
• Apropos of nothing: Is there anyone in the NHL who skates quite like Columbus' Jakub Voracek?
He's like a tripod that's in a constant state of tipping over but never quite does. And yet, he really gets around. Speed, shiftiness, the whole deal. Not going to lie: I can't take my eyes off it when he's on the ice. Been true forever.
Also, I'd take him on my team in a split-second, a sentiment I've playfully shared with him in the past. Superb passer off the wing, as seen through his wild line of four goals and 41 assists.
• I get that the Blue Jackets, the NHL's youngest team, have surprised by hanging on at ninth place in the East, albeit 13 points off the playoff perimeter. And I get that this was their seventh game in 12 days. And I get that their deadline saw a trade exit, that of Max Domi to the Hurricanes.
But man, I just don't see much out there. Not for now, and not for the future.
Of course, I might also be unduly influenced by having witnessed firsthand the Blue Jackets losing 10 in a row here, dating back to Nov. 13, 2015. Or the Penguins being 14-2-1 against them in their past 17 meetings anywhere.
That said, much respect to their rookie coach, Brad Larsen, for offering this assessment of the opponent after this one: "Pittsburgh's a pretty good team. They've been around for a while. You look up the middle of the ice, and that's three potential Hall of Famers. You know you have your hands full right away. But you put them in the same category as the Tampa Bays, the Carolinas, the Floridas. Those are dangerous teams. They're very elite."
Very elite sounds very ... juicy.
• Thanks for reading!
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
THE THREE STARS
As selected at PPG Paints Arena:
1. Jake Guentzel, Penguins LW
2. Sidney Crosby, Penguins C
3. Bryan Rust, Penguins RW
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE INJURIES
• Brock McGinn, left winger, in considered week-to-week with an injured right wrist.
• Jason Zucker, left winger, has been on IR since undergoing core muscle surgery Jan. 25. He's skating.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Guentzel-Crosby-Rodrigues
Heinen-Malkin-Rust
Rakell-Carter-Kapanen
Boyle-Blueger-Zohorna
Dumoulin-Letang
Matheson-Marino
Pettersson-Ruhwedel
And for Larsen's Blue Jackets:
Nyquist-Roslovic-Laine
Voracek-Sillinger-Bjorkstrand
Robinson-Kuraly-Bemstrom
Gaunce-Danforth-Chinakhov
Werenski-Peeke
Gavrikov-Bean
Carlsson-Kukan
THE SCHEDULE
Another day, another city, another game: It's off to Buffalo for a 7:38 p.m. faceoff in front of a national TNT television audience. There'll be no skate, of course, with the game the night before. Sullivan will speak with us at 5:30 p.m. Taylor and I will double-team this one, as well.
THE CONTENT
Visit our team page for everything.
