Kovacevic: Sullivan, team get behind Malkin, and maybe he's giving back

A month and three days ago, Russia invaded Ukraine.

A month and four days ago, Evgeni Malkin last spoke in public. 

Which is anything but a coincidence. Or a controversy, at least as I see it.

I'm invested in what global heads of state have to say on the matter. Or military experts. Or reporters on the ground in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Mariupol and Odesa. By comparison, I couldn't care less what any hockey player has to offer on this, much less one who's got zero connection to anything or anyone in that theater, who's a legal American citizen, whose son was born in Allegheny County, and who's gainfully employed right here in Pittsburgh.

I'm also put off to the extreme at the guilt by association being thrust at some Russian athletes, though not all. It's one thing for Alexander Ovechkin, a visible, vocal supporter of the cretin-turned-war-criminal Vladimir Putin, to answer questions as he did in D.C. soon after the invasion. He was free to respond -- or not -- as he wished, and he did so. It's entirely another for the British Sports Ministry to threaten to ban Daniil Medvedev, the world's No. 1-ranked tennis player, from Wimbledon this year unless he publicly denounces Putin.

That's insanity, of course. Medvedev has a family in Russia, and Putin's a madman. He'd be putting them in grave peril with a single syllable he speaks or even misspeaks.

Geno has family in Russia, too.

So, even as he was busy burying one, two, three goals for his 13th career hat trick in the Penguins' 11-2 pulverization of the Red Wings on this Sunday evening at PPG Paints Arena, I'd been certain throughout that we still wouldn't hear from him. And I'd have been just as certain if he'd scored four, five or six goals.

Which, again, is fine by me.

But I did feel it was finally time to hear from someone, anyone within the organization on the matter, so I'd made up my mind to ask Mike Sullivan, fully anticipating not only that he'd be prepared for the subject but also that he'd handle it with the grace, the poise and the professionalism I've long come to expect from the man.

He somehow exceeded even that:

"Yeah, we have we've had open discussion with Geno with respect to this," Sullivan began. "He knows that he has the full support of being part of the Pittsburgh Penguins family. And we're all concerned for him. You know, I can't imagine going through what he's going through. He has family living in Russia, a country that is at war right now, in a real difficult circumstance ... to no fault of his own, quite frankly. And I think a lot of this stuff is bleeding into sports."

He paused a moment.

"And knowing Geno the way I know him. He loves being a hockey player. He loves doing what he does. And he loves his family. So, for sure, we have concern for him, and we've had open dialogue with him with respect to this."

That guy's a hockey coach, my friends. And he comes complete with more leadership skills than probably half of the planet's political leaders, if not more.

As such, of course, his charge remains mostly singular, even in a setting like this: Win hockey games.

So, to an extent, I'd had a pretty good idea how he'd answer my question before asking. He's always engaged with his players, as athletes, as pieces of the team, but also as people. I've heard that from far too many of them for it not to be true. There's no way he wouldn't have been engaged with Malkin on this subject. Not just once, but regularly. Not just about how it might affect him on the ice that day, but also at home. Because the best of the best in Sullivan's line of work always accept that the separation between sports and life is scant.

Anyone else have Mario Lemieux's burden-from-his-shoulders five-goal masterpiece against the Blues -- on the day Austin was born prematurely but safely -- pop to mind?

Or, much more recently, Matt Murray's brilliant tribute of a shutout in St. Louis after returning from his father's funeral?

To that end, Malkin's performed at his absolute peak since we last heard him speak: He's got 10 goals and five assists in those 14 games and, maybe more remarkable, he stayed superlative even through a six-game pointless streak in the middle of that.

And then this, fresh off being forced to miss the game Friday in New York for an illness:

Look, I'm not out to make Malkin a hero here. Or Sullivan, for that matter. That term's always best used sparingly in sports, and that goes double within a war context.

Nor am I attempting to imply that Malkin's putting up all these points because he's inspired by the situation in some way. I'm not even sure how to make sense of such a notion, to be honest.

Rather, I'd suggest, as Sullivan did and as I've heard from others close to Geno, that hockey's a refuge in this case. And further, that Geno's very much the type to want to give back toward whatever support he's feeling in this environment.

Not least of which is this environment ...

JOE SARGENT / GETTY

Evgeni Malkin skates toward the Penguins' bench as hats rain down in the third period.

... that saw the fans roar and chant his name while raining caps down on the rink. Three goals and an assist brought his 27th career four-point game.

Listen to Sullivan when asked about the season Geno's had to date, now better a point-a-game pace with 16 goals and 16 assists in 30 games since returning from the knee surgery.

"Well, I think he worked extremely hard to get himself in the position to return to play," Sullivan began on this one. "And, you know, he deserves so much credit for the effort and the commitment that he put in. That rehab process was long and tedious, And Geno, I think, worked extremely hard to get back as quickly as he could for our team."

As for the past month: "I think he's getting better with each game he plays. You know, he's, when he's at his best, he's one of the few players that can who can take a game over. We're fortunate we have a couple of them on our team, but he's a generational talent. As is Sid. Geno, in my mind, is one of the greatest players of all time, not just of his generation. He's one of the greatest players of all time."

Anyone care to argue?

If so ...

"And the way he's playing right now ..." Sullivan would continue. "No one loves to score more than him. You can see his raw emotion when he scores. I think he gains so much confidence off his ability to generate offense and score goals. And so, we're hopeful that he'll just build more confidence and his game. It'll help us create the balance that we need through our lineup, and we're that much more dangerous when he's in our lineup. And so we were glad to get him back tonight. We weren't sure we were going to. He obviously felt well enough that he could play, and you can see the difference he made in the hockey game."

Seeing can be even better than hearing.

It's a hockey game. He's a hockey player.

NHL

• OK, so what was up with 11 goals?

And a nine-goal winning margin after that 5-1 flat-liner at the Garden?

In all candor, I haven't got a whole lot to offer that doesn't involve ripping the Red Wings to shreds. Everything about their showing was a joke, including, but hardly limited to, the goaltending of Alex Nedeljkovic, who's got to be the NHL's worst starting goaltender. A close second was lazy, disorganized defense that bordered on having earned third assists on a handful of the Pittsburgh goals. (Scroll back up, for example, and appreciate anew the Herculean efforts made by Sam Gagner and Adam Erne on Geno's second goal.)

"It's not acceptable," Dylan Larkin, Detroit's captain, would say. "We can't show up like that the rest of the season. We're going to get embarrassed every night."

"Frustrating. Disappointing. It's all those emotions," Jeff Blashill, Detroit's coach, would say. "But in the end, you've got to look in the mirror."

When both Larkin and Blashill look in the mirror, they see men who haven't participated in the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2016.

When Nedeljkovic looks in the mirror, he sees a vacated 6x4 net. Twenty-two shots is all it took for seven goals.

• Know how to tell when a good player's been stuck on a lousy team for far too long?

Larkin pumped his fist emphatically when scoring Detroit's goal that made it ... 6-1.

• Enjoy the full 11:

• Yeah, there's credit to be given to a big bounceback, I suppose. And to Rickard Rakell for his first goal with his new team, plus two assists and a generally strong game. And to Sidney Crosby and Teddy Blueger for matching his goal and two assists. And to Tristan Jarry for having been better than one might think, given the final, in making 33 saves.

As Bryan Rust amusingly worded it, "Tonight was substantially more fun than the other night."

Sullivan and Crosby both sounded as displeased after the other night as they had after any game all season.

"Obviously, we've got a proud group, and no one was really thrilled with our last game," Sullivan would say. "Knowing these guys the way I know them, I expected them to come out and play on their toes and respond. I think there's a lot of positives we can take out of this one."

Eh.

Let's talk again Tuesday night, when the Rangers roll right back through here. What I saw was a very bad team playing very badly, and the other team pouncing on that relentlessly.

• I asked Rust if anything could be culled from this one, as it relates to the rematch with the Rangers.

"Yeah," he replied, "I think any game, like tonight's or the one the other night, whether it's super-great or super-ugly, we've got to take our lessons from all of it,  from the good and the bad. And I think the more we can just slim those lessons and move forward toward the next one. I think that's what makes good teams good. And we've got to do that again coming up on Tuesday."

• Really liking Kasperi Kapanen's recent surge. If he can stick with a straight-line approach, he can really help regardless of his line assignment. That alone creates space for his linemates.

• The Penguins are now 40-17-10, marking their 14th 40-win season in the Crosby-Malkin era. Since 2006-07, no other team has more 40-win seasons.

Remember back then when it seemed like the one team they'd never surpass was Detroit?

• Geno's 13th hat trick gives him one more than Sid's 12. Mario had ... um, 40.

• Straying from this specific scene, if this little missive earlier in the day hadn't come from Marc-Andre Fleury, no one would believe it:

But it did. There's only one Flower.

• Only one 71, too. And one 87. What a generation of hockey we've all been blessed to witness.

• I'm bound for Bradenton early Monday evening to cover another week of the Pirates' spring training. 

Thanks for reading, as always!

DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS

National anthem, PPG Paints Arena, Sunday afternoon.

THE ESSENTIALS

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

THE THREE STARS

As selected at PPG Paints Arena:

1. Evgeni Malkin, Penguins C
2. Teddy Blueger, Penguins C
3. Rickard Rakell, Penguins LW

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 back to practicing in a non-contact sweater.

THE LINEUPS

Sullivan’s lines and pairings:

Guentzel-Crosby-Rodrigues
Rakell-Malkin-Rust
Heinen-Carter-Kapanen
Boyle-Blueger-Zohorna

Dumoulin-Letang
Matheson-Marino
Pettersson-Ruhwedel

And for Blashill's Red Wings:

Bertuzzi-Larkin-Raymond
Erne-Suter-Sundqvist
Vrana-Veleno-Gagner
Hirose-Rasmussen-Zadina

Oesterle-Seider
Juolevi-Hronek
Walman-Lindstrom

THE SCHEDULE

The team's off Monday, then plays the next night against the Rangers. Faceoff's at 7:08 p.m. Taylor and Dave Molinari will that one. I'll be covering baseball in Bradenton, Fla.

THE CONTENT

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