If I hadn't witnessed it, I wouldn't have believed it:
• Five touches
• By all five skaters on the ice
• Spanning all 200 feet of the rink
• Elapsing a total of 8.4 seconds
• Finished with a flawless five-hole tuck
And to think, it began with Kris Letang basically buying himself a breather near the Penguins’ net, then getting by the first forechecker by outletting up the right side since, as he’d describe for me on this Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena well after it'd bring the decisive goal in beating the Rangers, 3-2, “I mean, it just looked like we had some bodies up there, so I went that way. Nothing else to it.”
Nothing?
Buckle up, press play, and don't dare blink:
No, I'm serious about pressing play. Don't proceed without it, or I'll dispatch a disillusioned Danny Shirey, architect of this diagram, to commandeer everyone's devices and do so by force.
OK, all done now?
Wow, right?
Letang backtracks behind Tristan Jarry to survey the scene, but in doing so, smartly looks off to the left as if he'd just rim the puck around to that side. And no less smartly, P.O Joseph flips sides, in part to pick off Vince Trocheck, in part to position himself for a breakout the Rangers couldn't be anticipating.
The first movement of Letang's stick toward Joseph brings another recoil, as Trocheck had skated by. But in the same motion, Letang persists after Trocheck's out of harm's way.
"I had one guy on me that I had to beat," Letang told me. "After that, that was all those guys."
Yep. Joseph's got a triangulation of Rangers set to intercept whatever he's got next. Man, the New Yorkers were annoying with this. And effective. Gerard Gallant's boys had won seven in a row while holding the losers to seven total goals, and this was how. The instant they lose possession, they're in retreat to lay traps between the blue lines.
Joseph shows more smarts by making the safest possible choice in banking a pass up the wall past Chris Kreider, where Rickard Rakell awaits ... but he's static and facing back toward the Pittsburgh zone, an apparent threat to no one.
All right, stop reading and go press play up there again to more fully appreciate his touch.
Oh, my.
It's funny, but the two-on-one in which Jake Guentzel, then Sidney Crosby, performing surgery on local fan favorites Jacob Trouba and Igor Shesterkin seems academic by comparison, doesn't it?
Well worth an encore sighting, though:
Man, that's ... I don't even have adjectives for it. Front to finish.
So I offered Mike Sullivan a crack and, as ever, he didn't disappoint:
"Well, you know, we give them an idea of what their options might be based on our opponents and how they try to check, how they try to play," he'd start out, referring to the coaching staff. "But at the end of the day, they've got to take what the game gives them up. It's just about an awareness, having an idea of what you're gonna do with the puck before you get to it. And then, we've got to be somewhat predictable for one another."
Yep. That's the one that stands out. Joseph knew where Letang wanted to go. Rakell knew where Sid and Jake were. Sid and Jake knew they could roll top-speed through the neutral zone if Rakell could do his thing.
"So, yeah, there are schemes and strategies in play, but they were predictable for one another. And that was, for me, a highlight-reel goal. A really good play, all around by everyone. When Sid finished it off, it was a terrific finish. But I thought it was just a great play all around."
Look, I hadn't expected this resumption of this rivalry, the teams' first meeting since a fiery first round of the most recent Stanley Cup playoffs, to be defined by a single sequence. Truth be told, I'd hoped for a whole lot more in terms of spirit, spunk and all that, rather than one that'd move Sullivan afterward to assess: "The first half of the game, we just weren't at our best. I don't think we had a whole lot of emotion. We were flatlined a bit. We weren't skating, we weren't getting to pucks, we weren't getting on top of them, putting them under pressure. It was just a lackluster kind of performance for the first half of the game."
Mm-hm. Maybe we'll get spirit, spunk and all that in the next one.
For now, I'll take watching the Rangers do damned near everything right, especially defensively, to the extent that Gallant would gush, "I thought we played a great game. We worked hard. We competed hard. We came in here and played a real good team over there. The game was a toss-up" ... only to have that game determined by a spontaneous show of rink-length brilliance.
It wasn't retribution or revenge or anything similarly silly. The Rangers won what counted.
But this was a riveting reminder of what the vanquished could still do given another playoff encounter and a non-AHL goaltender.
JUSTIN BERL / GETTY
P.O Joseph duels for a 50/50 puck with the Rangers' Kaapo Kakko.
• To their credit, no one on either side really wanted to touch the rematch topic. The setting's just so, so different.
Or, as Kreider put it on the New York side, "Every year's so different. It's two teams competing for a playoff spot in the same division, so it's always going to be competitive, always going to be not a lot of time and space out there. This was a good test for us tonight."
• At the same time, let's not pretend two points don't matter.
The Penguins, now 15-3-2 since Nov. 9 and just removed from a seven-game winning streak, moved a point ahead of the Rangers into third place in the Metro at 19-9-4. And the Rangers just saw a seven-game winning streak of their own expire here.
"We have a lot of respect for their team. They're a good hockey team," Sullivan would say. "We've had a lot of close games against them over the last couple of years. Every time we play them, they seem to go down to one goal, a big play here or there, a key play."
Anyone looking at the standings?
"I do," Letang would say. "Every day."
• If the meeting were momentous for anyone, one would think it'd be Tristan Jarry, who couldn't face the Rangers in that playoff round until Game 7, and even then on a broken foot. He'd stop 26 of 28 shots, including a sweet right-pad save on a Filip Chytil turnaround with 1:27 left, to improve to 11-0-2 in his past 13 starts. Taylor Haase has more on that.
• From the say-what files: Kasperi Kapanen registered eight official hits and one unofficial save in preventing Bryan Rust from chasing after Ryan Lindgren for a crosscheck that followed his goal. Danny has more on that.
• Opinions varied on the game's true turning point, with some Penguins citing the two power-play goals — by Evgeni Malkin, then Rust, in the second period. But I'm way more about Rakell launching Chytil into the end boards earlier that period and waking up not only the home team but also the better part of the 18,005 on hand:
What a hockey player this dude is.
• Only Jason Zucker takes a 'week-to-week' injury status literally. He's got some lousy luck, but he's as committed as it comes. And in this one, he was a relentless puck retrieval machine.
That earned him the quote of the evening when Sullivan credited his visible, vocal presence with having awoken the Penguins: "I think sometimes, he has the ability to drag us into the fight, just with his energy, his competitiveness."
• Insane stat I: Geno's goal marked his 1,179th point, tying Sergei Fedorov for No. 2 Russian-born players in NHL history.
• Insane stat II: Sid's goal and assist gave him 100 career points against the Rangers, who join the Islanders (128) and Flyers (121) in that category. No other active player has 100 against any single franchise.
• Insane stat III: Jarry's 11-0-2 run and 13-game points streak now ranks in franchise history only behind Tom Barrasso's 15 in 1992-93, and Marc-Andre Fleury's two of 14 games each in 2006-07 and 2010-11.
• Thanks for reading my hockey coverage. It's never taken for granted.
JUSTIN BERL / GETTY
Bryan Rust tips a P.O. Joseph shot behind the Rangers' Igor Shesterkin.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE THREE STARS
As selected at PPG Paints Arena:
1. Sidney Crosby, Penguins C
2. Chris Kreider, Rangers LW
3. Bryan Rust, Penguins, RW
THE INJURIES
• Ryan Poehling, left winger, left this game halfway through the third period and didn't return. Sullivan called it a lower-body injury and didn't have additional detail.
• Jeff Petry, defenseman, skated on his own before the team's morning session Tuesday, a first since his wrist was hurt Dec. 10.
• Josh Archibald, right winger, missed his first game to a lower-body injury.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan's lines and defense pairings:
Jake Guentzel-Sidney Crosby-Rickard Rakell
Jason Zucker-Evgeni Malkin-Bryan Rust
Brock McGinn-Jeff Carter-Kasperi Kapanen
Ryan Poehling-Teddy Blueger-Danton Heinen
Marcus Pettersson-Kris Letang
Brian Dumoulin-Jan Rutta
P.O Joseph-Chad Ruhwedel
And for Gallant's Rangers:
Artemi Panarin-Mika Zibanejad-Barclay Goodrow
Chris Kreider-Vince Trocheck-Jimmy Vesey
Alexis Lafreniere-Filip Chytil-Kappo Kaako
Sammy Blais-Jonny Brodzinski-Vitali Kravtsov
Ryan Lindgren-Adam Fox
K'Andre Miller-Jacob Trouba
Ben Harpur-Braden Schneider
THE SCHEDULE
There'll be a practice Wednesday, 12 p.m., in Cranberry, then another game back here the following night against the Hurricanes, then the NHL's four-day Christmas break.
THE MULTIMEDIA
THE CONTENT
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