The remarkable, riveting evening upon which the Penguins and our city celebrated the formal retirement of Jaromir Jagr's No. 68 to the PPG Paints Arena rafters would ultimately see the guest of honor spend some time in the broadcast booth.
Because, one can presume, all this pageantry ...
... couldn't tire out a 52-year-old still being paid to play hockey, right?
Well, it turns out he's pretty proficient at color commentary, too. Maybe even prophetic.
"He's got the drive," Jagr would say of Sidney Crosby at one point, "That's what I admire about some players. Some players don't have it, but he has it."
Full context: This was part of a back-and-forth with old pal Phil Bourque in the second period, and the subject was what separates Sid from most everyone else. I can recall countless times Jagr's made similar points, that superstars are largely the product of a pure love of the game.
You know, doing this at age 36:
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) February 18, 2024
That's goal No. 31 for the current resident living legend.
As it turned out, though, this could've completed Jagr's statement in portraying the opposite:
Adrian Kempe scores a shorthanded goal, giving the Kings the lead late! #GoKingsGo pic.twitter.com/GdncZl1UL8
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) February 19, 2024
Uh-huh. Kings 2, Penguins 1.
Anyone else's stomach turn with both of Adrian Kempe's goals, but especially the disgraceful effort on the shorty above?
Look, I loved the ceremony. It was first-class to the core. Congrats to all involved, chiefly to Mario Lemieux for having begun the process six years ago, to Kevin Acklin for reaching out to Jagr to make it a reality, and to Paul Steigerwald for arranging, emcee-ing and all that other Steigy stuff that he does.
And Jagr's own contribution, from his raw-as-ever speech, to how he spent so much time getting to know Sid, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and all the active players, to surprising almost everyone by partaking in warmups before this game, to the almost surreal solo lap he took just prior to faceoff before winding up with an emotional wave from center ice ...
JEANINE LEECH / GETTY
Jaromir Jagr acknowledges the crowd from center ice after a solo lap following warmups.
... wow, just wow to every minute of it. I'll never forget it, and I'm betting few among the beyond-capacity crowd of 18,422 will, either.
But sorry, I'm also very much that guy who's not about to gloss over what followed, what should've been the punctuation and not the punctured balloon. Because I'm not sure any event throughout this whole bizarre season can more succinctly summarize the state of the franchise in 2024 than -- repeat after me -- Sid accounting for all the offense, hardly anyone doing a damned thing to wear down an opponent dragging through a third game in four days on its foreign coast, a third-period collapse, a worst-possible-time goal conceded by Tristan Jarry and, above all, the power play wins it ... for the other team.
"As the game went on," Bryan Rust would observe, "things kinda went awry."
Yeah, kinda.
I'm in a mood. Hear me out ...
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) February 19, 2024
... but only after watching that shorty again in slo-mo, with a singular lens on Reilly Smith, No. 19 in the neutral zone.
Seriously, what's he doing there?
What forward, after a decade in the NHL, steps up in that situation -- only he and Letang were back -- rather than backing off to bolster the numbers?
What the hell kind of effort was that, within the one-handed wave of his stick?
Mike Sullivan's view of the breakdown amounted to the following: "Well, we don't execute on the entry. And then we don't make good decisions when we're tracking."
Regarding the entry, no, I don't like Lars Eller dishing to his left in approaching the Los Angeles blue line, particularly not with Jim Hiller's Kings having established a clothesline approach all night, and particularly not with Eller himself having dumped the puck hard on his previous rush. But that's still a wonderful aerial steal by the great Anze Kopitar, plus Eller's been exceptional in his role all season and has earned many mulligans.
Not so for Smith, who's done little more than suck the offensive life from Geno and the second line all winter, as the advanced analytics show. But hey, at least he's appeared disinterested in his surroundings both on and off the ice ever since his arrival.
And not so for Sullivan, who had zero business suiting up some random waiver claim named Matthew Phillips, who's the size of one of my legs, for a game that common sense should've dictated wearing down an opponent that had a tough overtime win 24 hours earlier in Boston.
I asked Sullivan if there's anything more the Penguins could've/should've done on that specific front, and he replied, "Listen, we all play back-to-backs, and we all play tough games. That's just the nature of the league we're in. You know, could we have spent a little bit more time in the offensive zone and maybe forced them to expend more energy defending us? Yes, I thought we could have, as a group."
Maybe my view's old-school, or maybe it's influenced by so many of the familiar faces blessing the building on this day, but I can't be convinced that an opponent that's had to empty its collective tank the way the Kings did this weekend would enjoy being -- gasp! -- checked once in a while. Or experiencing any semblance of contact.
Instead, Cam Talbot, the Kings' goaltender who'd made 29 mostly routine saves, told Los Angeles reporters, "The guys made it pretty easy on me tonight, keeping them to the outside."
Easy to do without resistance.
Back to my mood ...
Remember when the summertime script was for the bottom-six forwards to be "hard to play against," per both Sullivan and Kyle Dubas?
When did that give way to the 5-foot-6 waiver claim whose debut was defined by twice making backward passes out of the Pittsburgh zone?
Whose idea was it to deploy the waiver claim on a power play late in a tied game?
Would there really have been no use here, in general, for anyone of greater size and/or physicality from anywhere in the organization?
Was this game just not important enough, with the Penguins seven points out of a playoff spot?
Was the broader event not important enough, with Mario and Jagr and all those other alumni watching from their suites, with a crowd so appreciative of this franchise's history that one of the loudest roars of the ceremony came when Jagr told everyone how he wished "my friend" Martin Straka could've attended? Because exactly many that people appreciated how much Marty once meant ... more than two decades ago?
I'll ask yet again, as I've done after so many recent losses: What'll it take to change something?
What'll it take to acquire or promote players who are actual complements to the stars as opposed to top-six posers?
Why can't anyone on the inside seem to recognize that, if it weren't for Eller, they'd be getting absolutely nothing from the bottom-six?
Anyone care to compare and contrast all of the Penguins' one-and-done zone entries to, say, all of the times a Los Angeles defenseman had to look back over his shoulder?
Who'd perish if the coach, even if staying true to his system, could augment his system for a single game by simply suggesting that a few bodies get banged? How about just for a period? Or just by a certain line?
What in the name of oxygen thievery did Jeff Carter do to earn 21 shifts to Geno's 22?
What did Jonathan Gruden, who's been Wilkes-Barre/Scranton's first guy over the boards when protecting a late lead and who had the top possession metrics of any forward the other night in Chicago, do to earn a demotion to the AHL right before this game?
Which evaluator assessed that Smith would represent an upgrade over Jason Zucker?
Can anyone imagine Zucker giving such an effort in that same scenario?
Why does it seem so inconceivable that Smith would be scratched from the next game?
How much longer until Sullivan, Dubas or anybody in charge ... takes charge?
Until the next number retirement?
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Live file
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE THREE STARS
As selected at PPG Paints Arena:
1. Adrian Kempe, Kings RW
2. Cam Talbot, Kings G
3. Sidney Crosby, Penguins C
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Rickard Rakell–Sidney Crosby–Bryan Rust
Reilly Smith–Evgeni Malkin–Drew O'Connor
Jesse Puljujarvi–Lars Eller–Matthew Phillips
Jansen Harkins–Jeff Carter–Colin White
Marcus Pettersson–Kris Letang
Ryan Graves–Erik Karlsson
John Ludvig–Chad Ruhwedel
And for Hiller's Kings:
Kevin Fiala–Anze Kopitar–Adrian Kempe
Trevor Moore–Phillip Danault–Viktor Arvidsson
Alex Laferriere–Pierre-Luc Dubois–Quinton Byfield
Arthur Kalijev–Alex Turcotte–Trevor Lewis
Mikey Anderson–Drew Doughty
Vladislav Gavrikov–Matt Roy
Andreas Englund–Brandt Clarke
THE FEED
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