Classic Grind: Hagelin's goal sent our city into orbit, but it meant so much more to him

Reprinting this 2017 column today because of Carl Hagelin's announced retirement from the NHL at age 35, Wednesday in his native Sweden:

CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Patric Hornqvist scored the goal that won the Stanley Cup. Carl Hagelin scored the one that sealed it.

Nothing will ever change Hornqvist. Not a thing. He's as hard-headed in life as he is in the crease.

Oh, not that he wasn't moved by it ...

... but there's a difference between diving deep into the emotion of the moment and allowing that moment to alter his persona in any way.

"Me? Nah, nothing," Hornqvist would tell me after the Penguins' informal skate Thursday afternoon at the Lemieux Sports Complex. "I'm just me. You know me."

Yep. But Hagelin?

"Haggy?" Hornqvist came right back with a grin. "That's different."

Yeah, sure seemed that way to me, too.

This was my first sighting of the champions since that magnificent night in Music City, and it was fun. Sidney Crosby surprised the prospects by participating in their session rather than the later one, probably the most Sid thing he's done since, oh, last week. Ryan Reaves was a blast. Tom Sestito behaved like his best bud, which was almost too good to be true. Ian Cole would wink at bystanders after each goal he'd score in each drill. Chad Ruhwedel, always ultra-serious, was carving up the ice with razor-sharp cuts. At the helm of it all, in my favorite scene, was Jay Caufield, amusingly finding it necessary to blow a whistle to grab some guys' attention.

I could do this all day and again all winter, truth be told. But it was Hagelin and his extra edge that caught my eye on this day, both on and off the ice. He was flying, as ever, but he also seemed ... more grounded?

"It does change you, I'm not going to lie," he'd say. "We're all very fortunate in here to win a couple championships now. But this ... I'll have this forever. I'll carry this with me forever."

By 'this,' of course, he means this ...

... the empty-netter with 13.6 seconds left that brought unbridled joy on the rink and on the bench and all across our region that's fallen for this franchise in every way.

Sure, it looks like the easiest goal in hockey history, a 100-foot breakaway into a vacated net. But having witnessed it from the press area at the front of Bridgestone Arena's second level, I was always struck by one singular, richly ironic aspect of it: Hockey's the world's fastest sport. Hagelin is hockey's fastest skater. And yet, this took so, so long to transpire.

"I know," he'd say. "Tell me about it."

Uh-uh, I replied. You tell us about it. Because there's no way you haven't relived every millisecond of that rush, both in the physical and mental meanings of the term.

"Oh, yeah, for sure. Again and again."

Deep breath.

"OK, so Dumo's back there with the puck and he's looking to rim it out," he began, referencing Brian Dumoulin at the end boards. "It took a good bounce for us, and it got past one of their guys. I think it was P.K."

Sure was. P.K. Subban. End of a long shift for Nashville's No. 1 defenseman and his partner, Roman Josi.

"Yeah, Josi's on the other side. So I look out there and see the puck. It's out at center. Josi's coming hard, and the puck started rolling. So I felt like I could just skate my hardest and get to it."

Something he's done better than his peers -- all of them -- since he put on his first set of blades as a toddler in Sodertalje, Sweden. Nobody was going to catch him.

"I was fresh, too. I'd just come off the bench, which was on our defensive side, got right into the middle of the zone. And as soon as Dumo had the puck, I knew he was going to just get it out. With the way the ice was, he didn't really have a choice. So I turned and took off at the same time he let it go. I had full speed. I had all the momentum. And I knew it was going to come out somewhere."

With the way the ice was -- think of it as piles of soaked sugar rather than frozen water -- what followed was no sure thing.

"So terrible. And the puck was rolling. All I wanted to do was to make sure I had it and held onto it."

He did that at the Nashville blue line, then proceeded to basically steer the puck forward, like a kid sticking a rolling tire down the road.

"I've seen guys miss breakaways like that because the puck will hop up over your stick, so I kind of angled my body and both of my skates behind it. If it hopped over, I wasn't going to let it go anywhere."

He really did. I hadn't noticed that at the time or since. Stop reading and thumb back up to watch it again.

"Now I've just got to put it in. Oh, man, just put it in."

Which he did, and history followed 13.6 seconds later.

And while that played out, let history show now and forever and ever on endless loop, Evgeni Malkin pretty much punched Phil Kessel in the mouth:

That's because, anticipating what would happen next as all the great ones always do, Malkin was overcome with joy the moment the puck got by Subban, even though, in that moment, both Subban and Josi technically had body position on Hagelin.

"I've seen the video ... I don't know how many times," Hagelin said with a laugh. "It's hilarious for all of us. ... Well, maybe not for Phil."

And yet, even the sweetest single achievement of his career came, if he's being completely candid, with a bitter prefix. Because earlier in that Stanley Cup Final, after a rough playoff, after nothing resembling the HBK magic of the previous year, Mike Sullivan and the coaching staff made him a healthy scratch for Games 1 and 2 in Pittsburgh. He was angry. He was "pissed off," as he put it at the time, in a strikingly rare public rebuke of Sullivan since his arrival.

Sure, he was hurt. Sure, he was still recovering from the cracked foot from blocking a shot two months earlier in Winnipeg. But he felt that he belonged on the ice, that he could still help if he could still skate.

"The season was tough in a lot of ways," Hagelin said of a 2016-17 that saw him miss 21 games, score just six goals, then get held to a single goal and zero assists before the empty-netter. "I had some injuries. I had some things slow me down. I wasn't good enough. But I know what I can do. I know my ability. I know I'm going to be better, stronger this year."

A month after the goal, he was all grown up and married in Sweden to his wife, Erica, and it was the toast of his native country. The press, the paparazzi and some of the nation's biggest hockey stars partook: Henrik Lundqvist. And Erik Karlsson. And Mats Zuccarello.

In the hockey sense, Hagelin's maturity could manifest for years to come, and to the Penguins' continuing benefit even at two more years of a $4 million annual cap hit. He's no longer labeled, at least not sensibly, as that classic fast guy with slow hands. He's no longer just a forechecker, just a penalty-killer. Those were the common tags in his time with the Rangers and especially with the Ducks, and there are times that criticism can still apply. But he's now got 78 goals and 113 assists over 407 NHL games, as well as a not-all-bad 8.7 shooting percentage.

He's also got hands quick enough to have raised the Cup over his head twice at age 29.

And maybe a third before long, right?