"Points are points," as Chad Ruhwedel would tell me. "Especially against Philly."
End of column. Thanks for reading.
No, really, I'll go a little extra with all the essentials: Sidney Crosby put forth a goal and three assists for his 39th career four-point output, Bryan Rust scored twice before exiting with an injury, new dude Emil Bemstrom buried a beauty in his debut, and the Penguins endured multiple self-made messes to fend off the archrival Flyers, 7-6, on this Sunday evening at PPG Paints Arena.
There. AP-style. All done. For real.
Now close the file, or I'll start pleading for everyone to vacate the premises like a modern-day, post-credits 'Ferris Bueller:'
Nah? Still here?
Fine, but there needs to a mutual understanding before I proceed that not a blessed thing about this outcome mattered aside from the following:
NHL
Note, please, that those are the Metropolitan Division standings, not the Eastern Conference wild-card standings I'd been embedding within most of my columns. More than ever, there's a good reason to switch up: The Penguins are now within seven points of the Flyers, the Metro's third-place team, with four games in hand. Whereas, in the wild-card standings, they're nine points behind the Lightning, the conference's final wild-card team, with five games in hand.
Top three teams in the Metro make the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Rangers and Hurricanes are locks. The Flyers, Devils and Capitals are anything but, a lot like the local club. And that path, just calling it like it is, feels like far more plausible than through the wild card:
NHL
See what I mean?
More quantity to climb. More quality to climb.
Or, put another way, would anyone prefer chasing the Lightning to chasing these deeply damaged Flyers, who've lost four of their past five, who've lost leading scorer Travis Konecny to injury, who've lost starting goaltender Carter Hart to a pending sexual assault trial in Ontario, and who've just lost two of their top six defensemen this weekend alone?
Thought so.
Also and relevant ...
“Obviously, it's a huge rivalry,” Sid would say after this. “It's been that way long before I started playing here."
Yep. That, too.
So, with all that in hand, let's review why it shouldn't bug anyone that these maddening Penguins seemed satisfied in this allegedly urgent setting to suddenly embark on a mission to bring back 1984-style pond hockey, unless one can otherwise account for Erik Karlsson's fronting/spacing on this Tyson Foerster gimme putt:
TYSON FOERSTER FINISHES IN FRONT!!! 2-2!!! #FLYERS pic.twitter.com/JtAq94kmms
— Flyers Nation (@FlyersNation) February 25, 2024
Or that their power play conceded one of the ugliest short-handed goals seen anywhere across the NHL this season, with Scott Laughton finishing this through a designed zone entry the Flyers' penalty-killers have put on film dozens of times:
Scott Laughton ties it up at 4 for the Flyers with a shorthanded goal!#LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/LId9fuspvF
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) February 25, 2024
Or that Tristan Jarry apparently mistook this game for the 2021 playoffs in what easily was his season-worst showing of six goals on 22 shots:
Cam York responds in a hurry for the Flyers, trimming Philly's deficit back to 1!#LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/bPGwA7XCsS
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) February 25, 2024
The list's long.
But the list's immaterial.
I asked Mike Sullivan if he could care less, at this stage, how his team would've taken both points from this one.
“Obviously, it’s a huge game for us against a team that we’re gonna fight for a playoff spot," he'd reply. "We've got a number of games in hand, but these head-to-heads are really important."
Right. But there's another factor, too.
"I thought we played hard. I thought we competed," he continued. "Probably for me, the most encouraging thing in the whole game was after the end of the second period there when we give up the goal against on the power play and we’re going into the third period with a tie game ... for me, the most encouraging part was just the resilience of the group going out in the third period and just having the ability to put it behind them. Just being forward-thinking. Just competing in that third period. For me, that’s a real encouraging aspect of tonight’s win.”
It should be.
Remember all those games where the Penguins accumulated nothing but style points?
Well, consider this the reverse. Almost everything about it was gross, but they unquestionably gutted it out.
Also, consider it very well-timed.
“It’s huge," Ruhwedel would tell me. "We’re about to go on a tough road trip and sit on a plane for 4 1/2 hours."
That's the flight to Vancouver, where the Penguins are about to begin a four-game trip through Western Canada and Seattle.
"So yeah, it feels good to get the win. Spirits are up, for sure.”
Sid's stance might've summed it up best.
"It's two points. It's a big two points," he'd say. "We know the situation with the standings and games in hand and all that stuff. Getting the win in the last game and trying to build off that going into the road trip was really important."
He was referring to beating the Canadiens three nights earlier.
"If we just take care of things, get ourselves back in the picture, that's all we have to do. We've got to continue to get points, and I think we all believe that we can get ourselves back in it."
Few others might. I've no doubt they do. I've also no doubt that this is where the internal focus remains, not on the March 8 NHL trade deadline or anything else. All the chatter in this circle's about collecting as many of these upcoming eight points as possible and, in turn, converting some of those games in hand into real collateral.
It won't be easy, to state the obvious. No Rust for any spell would leave Sid without both of his usual wingers, with Jake Guentzel already out. Jarry and Alex Nedeljkovic are now both fresh off season-worst showings at most inopportune times. And, contrary to my own making light of it in this column, the defending's going to require a massive upgrade to contain the likes of the Canucks and Oilers, in particular.
I mentioned some of this to Rickard Rakell, who snapped his latest goal drought at 15 games.
"Whatever," he'd say. "We got the two points. We want more points, and we're going to do everything we can to get them."
Awesome. Ideal, I say.
Does anyone seriously want this bunch overthinking things?
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. Bryan Rust, Penguins RW
3. Tyson Foerster, Flyers RW
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Rickard Rakell–Sidney Crosby–Bryan Rust
Drew O'Connor–Evgeni Malkin–Valtteri Puustinen
Reilly Smith–Lars Eller–Emil Bemstrom
Jansen Harkins–Noel Acciari–Jeff Carter
P.O Joseph–Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson–Erik Karlsson
Ryan Graves–Chad Ruhwedel
And for John Tortorella's Flyers:
Owen Tippett–Morgan Frost–Tyson Foerster
Joel Farabee–Sean Couturier–Cam Atkinson
Noah Cates–Ryan Poehling–Garnet Hathaway
Nic Deslauriers–Scott Laughton–Olle Lycksell
Cam York–Travis Sanheim
Nick Seeler–Sean Walker
Marc Staal–Jamie Drysdale
THE FEED
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