In-Depth: Malkin's mates share what's set him apart for 1,000 games

CHICAGO -- Sidney Crosby still remembers the first time he saw Evgeni Malkin play.

It was the 2005 World Junior Championships in Grand Forks, N.D. It was the second appearance in that tournament for both Crosby and Malkin, but the two hadn't gone head-to-head at the one in Helsinki, Finland, the year prior. They finally met in the gold medal game, with Crosby and Canada winning, 6-1, over Malkin and Russia.

Malkin made his adult-level World Championships debut with the senior Russian team later that season. Watching that one, Crosby couldn't help but take notice again of the young Russian prospect who had been drafted by the Penguins the year before.

"He was just dominating," Crosby recalled when I sat down with him earlier this week. "He was just 18 then. I thought he was pretty special from the first time I saw him play."

Crosby and Kris Letang were both drafted by the Penguins that summer, and Crosby made his NHL debut in the season that followed. Letang and Malkin joined Crosby in Pittsburgh a season later, and the three have been together now for 17 seasons.

Through Malkin' career 999 games, he's amassed 451 goals, 714 assists and 1,165 points, ranking No. 3 all-time in franchise history in each category behind Mario Lemieux and Crosby. With the Penguins' 5-3 victory over the Blackhawks here Sunday at the United Center, an 'emotional' experience for all concerned, Malkin joined Crosby in the record books as the only players in franchise history to play 1,000 games with the Penguins.

I spoke with Crosby, Letang and a number of other teammates of Malkin about what makes Malkin so special and some of their favorite memories of Malkin over the years.

Crosby remembers it being "pretty hard to communicate" with Malkin during those early years together, when Malkin's English was extremely limited. Still, that didn't stop Malkin from quietly tagging along with his teammates when everyone would hang out outside of the rink.

"I mean, he didn't say anything," Letang said. "He would just come and have dinner and not say a word. He would just say the same thing, 'hamburger,' all the time. ... He was so shy earlier on and didn't speak much, but his humor is funny, like joking around making fun of everyone."

Letang was a little amused recalling that Malkin insisted on his teammates calling him "71" rather than his name back then. 

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Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin celebrate on the bench in Malkin's rookie 2005-06 season.

Players who made their debuts with the Penguins later in Malkin's career remember being a little intimidated by Malkin at first.

"Obviously, you're pretty scared," Jake Guentzel said with a laugh about his first time meeting Malkin. "He's a superstar. My first game I sat alongside him and Phil (Kessel), I think you get pretty nervous. You don't want to mess up."

"It was a lot of intimidation on my part," Bryan Rust said. "I was probably a little nervous to meet him, just a guy of his stature both physically and with what he's done."

Brian Dumoulin said that he felt like he was "tiptoeing" around Malkin early on, and was a little nervous being around someone of Malkin's stature, until he realized he just had to talk to Malkin like any other person.

"I wouldn't say he's the most outgoing guy when you first get to know him," Dumoulin said. "It takes some time to get to know him and for him to open up and for you. I remember people were saying to Geno, like 'Why don't you say hi?' He's like, 'Why don't you say hi to me?' That's kind of how it was for 'G'. I mean, you've got to approach him just like anyone else. That's how he wants to be treated."

A common trend in players' first interactions with Malkin is Malkin getting their names wrong, much to the amusement of his teammates.

"It's such a Geno thing to do, to not remember names," Kasperi Kapanen said. "I don't know, I actually should go ask him now to see if he remembers my first name or not."

Consensus seems to be that Malkin's gotten better with names over the years, but it's still a bit of a running gag for a teammate to ask him what a newer teammate's name is to see what he says. Marcus Pettersson remembers being in the stick room with Patric Hornqvist in his first week after being traded to the Penguins when Malkin walked in the room. Hornqvist pointed to Pettersson and asked Malkin what his name was. Malkin paused, then pointed to the stick Pettersson was holding, and read the "Pettersson" label out loud. Players used to do the same at the yearly rookie parties, making it a game to see if Malkin knows the actual names of the younger players. He might know a guy as "Rusty" or "Dumo," but beyond that?

"That's the thing," Dumoulin said with a laugh. "He might not know my first and my last name, but he knows my nickname, you know? That's all that really matters, I don't care. He doesn't have to know my name or anything like that. It's pretty funny."

Some players think that Malkin's notoriously bad memory with names might be a little bit of an act, given his sense of humor.

"He called me 'goalie' for the longest time," Casey DeSmith said. "He's definitely a character in the room. I remember the first time he said like, 'Good game Casey' I was like, (shocked face) 'What'd you say?!'"

"He just kept calling me Jack," Guentzel laughed, recalling his rookie year. "I don't know if he was just messing around with me, playing a prank on a young guy. But it was just funny, because nobody really knows."

When you ask players what makes Malkin so special or how they'd describe him, it's that sense of humor that is often mentioned first. He keeps his teammates laughing, and keeps the room light.

"There's no filter," Letang said of Malkin. "It comes out raw with that kind of broken English. It's the broken English that makes it funny."

"His sense of humor, I think is awesome," Rust said. "He just kind of sticks to himself, he's kind of quiet most of the time. Then all of a sudden, he'll just start cracking jokes, he'll just kind of pop in there just at the right time. He has the whole room laughing."

"Every day, he always says something," Kapanen said. "He's got those one-liners that make everybody laugh, and he's just a funny, fun guy to be around. He's one of the funnier guys I've ever met. So it's been a pleasure to be here with him.

"He's always got some smartass comment to make or something sarcastic," DeSmith said.

"He's spontaneous," Tristan Jarry said. "He's just always yelling, always getting the guys to laugh."

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Evgeni Malkin celebrates in Toronto this season

On the ice, it's Malkin's passion, drive and skill that get mentioned by his teammates as what sets him apart.

"It's just his natural ability," DeSmith said

"He's generational talent," Jarry said. "Being able to watch him every day in practice and in every game, it's something special."

"He's passionate," said Rust. "He loves coming here and he loves playing hockey. He loves being with this team, in this organization, in the city. You can see it when he's playing well, you can see it when he's playing bad. He just wears his emotions on his sleeve and he just wants this team, he wants himself, and he wants everybody else to do so well. You can see how much he cares."

Pettersson compared Malkin to a train, and spoke about admiring that same passion Rust spoke of.

"He's fire," Pettersson said. "He's like a locomotive when he takes over the game, he's so powerful the way he drives the puck. I just think about whenever he gets fired up on the ice, scores a big goal or something like that. Like when we were in Toronto and he had a pretty bad tripping call on him then scored. When he gets fired up, he creates so much energy for us and it's fun to see him in beast mode when he gets like that."

Dumoulin said that Malkin is a "magician" with what he's able to do on the ice.

"Pittsburgh is very lucky and I think I'm very lucky to be able to watch him play for so long," Dumoulin said. "I mean, on the ice, he's the magician. You never really know what he's going to do with the puck, whether it be D zone, offensive zone, neutral zone. It's just fun to watch him get the puck and just go. He's always a game changer every time he's out there. It's exciting to watch."

"I think of him as a beast," Letang said. "He's just so strong, so big, skilled. He's kind of unstoppable when he's playing well."

Crosby said that if he had to choose one word to describe Malkin, it would be "dominant."

"The way he can take over a game is pretty rare," Crosby said. "There's not too many guys who can do that, and he's done it for a long time."

Crosby said that he has "tons" of favorite on-ice memories of Malkin, with a big one being his first NHL goal against the Devils in 2006:

"Then against Tampa, when he walked through everybody," Crosby added, referring to this goal in 2012:

"Edmonton, the spin-o-rama," Crosby said, talking about this goal from 2015:

"That Carolina game, the hat trick he had in the playoffs," Crosby said, on Malkin's performance in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Final in 2009:

"I've been lucky," Crosby reflected. "I got to see a lot of those close up. Those are memories that I'll cherish forever."

Letang mentioned Malkin's entire performance in the 2009 playoffs -- when Malkin led the team in scoring with 14 goals and 22 assists in 24 games -- as one of his favorite memories. He also named Malkin's goal in the last game of the 2011-12 regular season against the Flyers: It was the first (and only) time Malkin hit the 50-goal mark in his career, and capped off a regular season in which Malkin won the Art Ross Trophy as the league's leading scorer, the Hart Memorial Trophy as the league MVP, and the Ted Lindsay as the league's top player as voted by the players:

Letang was asked what he thinks Malkin's legacy will be in Pittsburgh, and he thought it was a tough question to answer. He mentioned the three Stanley Cups they won together, and Malkin's impending 1,000th game, but said that Malkin's legacy to him will be something different.

"I don't remember those guys for the hockey part," he said. "I remember those guys for being with them. He's funny. He's hilarious. He's loud in his own way."

If one were to make a Mount Rushmore of the top four Penguins in franchise history, Malkin would surely be on it. His skill, dominance and passion are what has made him one of the greatest to ever play for the Penguins. But it's who he is off the ice that has him so beloved by his teammates.