Patric Hornqvist pursues a puck in the Sabres’ zone Saturday night in Buffalo. — GETTY
BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC
NEW YORK — The Penguins will lose in four.
Let’s start with that as the default outlook for this first-round Stanley Cup playoff series that gets going tonight at Madison Square Garden: The Rangers will take Game 1,they’ll drive the nail deeper in Game 2, and once the scene shifts to Pittsburgh, the home atmosphere will be so fatalistic, so toxic that the visitors will sail away with the sweep.
That’s the script, right?
Well, sorry, I’ve got nothing clever to counter it, if that’s where you thought this was headed.
The difference in these teams’ depth, their momentum, their size and strength and speed, their systematic play, even their energy and enthusiasm levels, couldn’t be more stark. There’s just too much tilting toward the NHL’s best regular-season team, plus too much tilting against the Penguins without Kris Letang, to reasonably expect any other outcome.
Could the Penguins take a game?
Hey, they wouldn’t be the first to steal something in this part of the world.
Two?
I suppose.
Three?
That’s seriously pushing it.
But the necessary four?
“I don’t see why not,” Patric Hornqvist was telling me this week, his tone anything but dispirited. “We had a rough finish to the season, but everything now is new, fresh. We know what kind of hockey team we have when we’re playing well. We just need to get back to that in a hurry.”
OK, then. Hornqvist, of all Penguins this season, has earned having his voice heard.
So in that spirit and that spirit alone, here are four ways that No. 72 and company could carry the day, and by that I mean all four would have to happen:
4. Clone Hornqvist
Barring a biogenetic miracle, this isn’t likely by sunset. But it nonetheless applies in that the only way the Penguins will deliver any semblance of scoring depth — something they haven’t enjoyed since, oh, Thanksgiving — is if this outrageously unproductive cast of wingers will take it upon themselves to compete with at least half of Hornqvist’s determination and drive.
To the latter term, that’s drive to the net.
“We need to go hard, push through the middle, get to the crease, make things happen,” Blake Comeau said, essentially listing everything the non-Hornqvist wingers haven’t done since, oh, Thanksgiving. “When you’re up against a great goalie like Henrik Lundqvist, it’s that much more important. We’ve got to make sure he isn’t seeing shots, that he doesn’t get too comfortable.”
Or comfortable at all. Lundqvist’s season was set back by injury, but he remains a world-class talent when at his peak. And especially when comfortable. He’ll settle into a groove in which he focuses solely on the initial save, then watches his mobile defenseman take out the trash.
Or he gets uncomfortable.
The single most predictable element to this series — yes, more than the New York sweep or even Marc Staal renewing his head-hunting license — is that, at some point, Lundqvist will sense Hornqvist’s presence and react as if he’s been mowed down by an elephant gun. And because it’s still Gary Bettman’s NHL, a referee will raise his right arm.
The Penguins, and not just Hornqvist, can’t be dissuaded when this happens. They’ll need to keep crashing, keep annoying, keep forcing Lundqvist’s hand and exposing his theatrics for all to see.
Also, not to be forgotten, this is where the goals are.
In preparing for his first playoffs as a head coach, Mike Johnston placed an above-and-beyond emphasis on this in practice all week at Consol Energy Center. If one forward was at the net, he wanted two. If it was two, he wanted three.
“That’s playoff hockey,” Johnston said. “It’s been our focus all year, but now is when it counts.”
3. Flower power
There is no stake large enough to drive through the narrative that Marc-Andre Fleury still struggles in the playoffs. Not the fact that he was nothing less than the Penguins’ top performer last spring. Not his .915 save percentage in that postseason, the highest of his career even including the Cup year. No, he made one highlight-reel worthy mistake in one game in Columbus in one series that his team actually went on to win, and that’s all that so many recall.
And I’m not even referring to Pittsburgh here. It’s amazing how the Canadian media, in particular, relentlessly feast off this when the Penguins are north of the border.
Fleury isn’t the same person he was. He’s more mature, more focused and, as I’ve been writing for two years, he’s a lot angrier when he plays. Whatever his motivation, it works.
So don’t sweat the Flower. He won’t wilt. He’s in a terrific place.
Trouble is, he’ll be hard-pressed to play that much better than King Henrik and be the difference …
Maybe the most astounding aspect of the Penguins’ awful regular-season finish was that they were that bad in spite of Fleury staying strong throughout, allowing more than two goals only six times in the last 24 games. And more than three goals only twice!
But all that adds to this context is that he can’t do it alone. And he knows it.
“It’s going to take all of us, a real team effort, especially with Tanger out,” Fleury said. “For myself, I’m looking forward to the playoffs. I had fun last year, and I’m going to have fun this year.”
2. System over stars
Points will be expected of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and that will be true of the latter even if his current — and undisclosed — injury drags into the playoffs. They’re elite talents. They’re expected to perform in prime time.
But these Penguins already have shown themselves as a team that won’t be carried by star power. That’s mostly because of the aforementioned passenger wingers, but also because Johnston’s system — at its root, before he inexplicably bailed on it a couple months ago — is built on a pack mentality.
My goodness, do the Penguins need to get back to that.
On the attack, they need aggressive forechecking that includes liberal pinching by the defensemen.
“That’ll be huge for us,” Ian Cole said. “We can’t get stuck in our own zone.”
Right. And now that the five-D nightmare has passed, pinching is possible again.
Same goes for the breakout. Although management denied this, defensemen were instructed during the nightmare to stay back rather than support the rush, a vital component to this playbook. That’s why so many rushes ended with an ugly turnover. All concerned were operating with an arm tied behind their backs, including the forwards.
That will change.
“We’ll absolutely be up there,” Ben Lovejoy said.
Defensively, the pack will suit the Penguins well in cutting off the Rangers’ east-west preferences once in the zone. They love to go laterally, then whip across once they don’t like what they see. The Flyers do this, too, to great effect against the Penguins — as with everything when those teams meet — but New York does it with more talent and all four lines.
The coach was pushing this hard, too.
You know, I praised Johnston upon arrival and deep into the season, primarily because his Xs and Os seemed a perfect match for the personnel and in preparing for the playoffs. That faded as he wavered and the team floundered, obviously, but the principle originally put into place can still work. The modern NHL game is all about puck possession, and that’s bolstered by support. That’s what Johnston is all about.
If he still has faith in what he only recently preached, this is an excellent time to show it.
And an even better time for his players to demonstrate it … with gusto.
1. Believe
Very, very few do. I sure don’t, at least not until I see the first power-play goal. You’ll note that I’ve given up on that concept so completely it wasn’t even cited.
But we don’t matter. They do.
If the Penguins somehow, someway can shrug off their March/April misery, recall the victories against Western Conference powers and possibly even embrace their rare underdog position, then they’ll at least enter the process with hope. And that should never be lightly discarded, especially not for a collective that within the past week alone had veterans describing its psyche as “fragile.”
“There’s no reason for this team not to have confidence,” Nick Spaling said. “I don’t sense that.”
“We know what we can do,” David Perron said.
“I kind of like this, to be honest,” Fleury said. “It’s really so different from anything a lot of us have experienced here. Nobody expects us to do anything. Everyone thinks we’ll lose.”
He flashed that trademark smile.
“What if we don’t think that?”
April 16, 2015
Column: All about that Hornqvist
by Dejan Kovacevic • Columns • Penguins
Patric Hornqvist pursues a puck in the Sabres’ zone Saturday night in Buffalo. — GETTY
BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC
NEW YORK — The Penguins will lose in four.
Let’s start with that as the default outlook for this first-round Stanley Cup playoff series that gets going tonight at Madison Square Garden: The Rangers will take Game 1,they’ll drive the nail deeper in Game 2, and once the scene shifts to Pittsburgh, the home atmosphere will be so fatalistic, so toxic that the visitors will sail away with the sweep.
That’s the script, right?
Well, sorry, I’ve got nothing clever to counter it, if that’s where you thought this was headed.
The difference in these teams’ depth, their momentum, their size and strength and speed, their systematic play, even their energy and enthusiasm levels, couldn’t be more stark. There’s just too much tilting toward the NHL’s best regular-season team, plus too much tilting against the Penguins without Kris Letang, to reasonably expect any other outcome.
Could the Penguins take a game?
Hey, they wouldn’t be the first to steal something in this part of the world.
Two?
I suppose.
Three?
That’s seriously pushing it.
But the necessary four?
“I don’t see why not,” Patric Hornqvist was telling me this week, his tone anything but dispirited. “We had a rough finish to the season, but everything now is new, fresh. We know what kind of hockey team we have when we’re playing well. We just need to get back to that in a hurry.”
OK, then. Hornqvist, of all Penguins this season, has earned having his voice heard.
So in that spirit and that spirit alone, here are four ways that No. 72 and company could carry the day, and by that I mean all four would have to happen:
4. Clone Hornqvist
Barring a biogenetic miracle, this isn’t likely by sunset. But it nonetheless applies in that the only way the Penguins will deliver any semblance of scoring depth — something they haven’t enjoyed since, oh, Thanksgiving — is if this outrageously unproductive cast of wingers will take it upon themselves to compete with at least half of Hornqvist’s determination and drive.
To the latter term, that’s drive to the net.
“We need to go hard, push through the middle, get to the crease, make things happen,” Blake Comeau said, essentially listing everything the non-Hornqvist wingers haven’t done since, oh, Thanksgiving. “When you’re up against a great goalie like Henrik Lundqvist, it’s that much more important. We’ve got to make sure he isn’t seeing shots, that he doesn’t get too comfortable.”
Or comfortable at all. Lundqvist’s season was set back by injury, but he remains a world-class talent when at his peak. And especially when comfortable. He’ll settle into a groove in which he focuses solely on the initial save, then watches his mobile defenseman take out the trash.
Or he gets uncomfortable.
The single most predictable element to this series — yes, more than the New York sweep or even Marc Staal renewing his head-hunting license — is that, at some point, Lundqvist will sense Hornqvist’s presence and react as if he’s been mowed down by an elephant gun. And because it’s still Gary Bettman’s NHL, a referee will raise his right arm.
The Penguins, and not just Hornqvist, can’t be dissuaded when this happens. They’ll need to keep crashing, keep annoying, keep forcing Lundqvist’s hand and exposing his theatrics for all to see.
Also, not to be forgotten, this is where the goals are.
In preparing for his first playoffs as a head coach, Mike Johnston placed an above-and-beyond emphasis on this in practice all week at Consol Energy Center. If one forward was at the net, he wanted two. If it was two, he wanted three.
“That’s playoff hockey,” Johnston said. “It’s been our focus all year, but now is when it counts.”
3. Flower power
There is no stake large enough to drive through the narrative that Marc-Andre Fleury still struggles in the playoffs. Not the fact that he was nothing less than the Penguins’ top performer last spring. Not his .915 save percentage in that postseason, the highest of his career even including the Cup year. No, he made one highlight-reel worthy mistake in one game in Columbus in one series that his team actually went on to win, and that’s all that so many recall.
And I’m not even referring to Pittsburgh here. It’s amazing how the Canadian media, in particular, relentlessly feast off this when the Penguins are north of the border.
Fleury isn’t the same person he was. He’s more mature, more focused and, as I’ve been writing for two years, he’s a lot angrier when he plays. Whatever his motivation, it works.
So don’t sweat the Flower. He won’t wilt. He’s in a terrific place.
Trouble is, he’ll be hard-pressed to play that much better than King Henrik and be the difference …
Maybe the most astounding aspect of the Penguins’ awful regular-season finish was that they were that bad in spite of Fleury staying strong throughout, allowing more than two goals only six times in the last 24 games. And more than three goals only twice!
But all that adds to this context is that he can’t do it alone. And he knows it.
“It’s going to take all of us, a real team effort, especially with Tanger out,” Fleury said. “For myself, I’m looking forward to the playoffs. I had fun last year, and I’m going to have fun this year.”
2. System over stars
Points will be expected of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and that will be true of the latter even if his current — and undisclosed — injury drags into the playoffs. They’re elite talents. They’re expected to perform in prime time.
But these Penguins already have shown themselves as a team that won’t be carried by star power. That’s mostly because of the aforementioned passenger wingers, but also because Johnston’s system — at its root, before he inexplicably bailed on it a couple months ago — is built on a pack mentality.
My goodness, do the Penguins need to get back to that.
On the attack, they need aggressive forechecking that includes liberal pinching by the defensemen.
“That’ll be huge for us,” Ian Cole said. “We can’t get stuck in our own zone.”
Right. And now that the five-D nightmare has passed, pinching is possible again.
Same goes for the breakout. Although management denied this, defensemen were instructed during the nightmare to stay back rather than support the rush, a vital component to this playbook. That’s why so many rushes ended with an ugly turnover. All concerned were operating with an arm tied behind their backs, including the forwards.
That will change.
“We’ll absolutely be up there,” Ben Lovejoy said.
Defensively, the pack will suit the Penguins well in cutting off the Rangers’ east-west preferences once in the zone. They love to go laterally, then whip across once they don’t like what they see. The Flyers do this, too, to great effect against the Penguins — as with everything when those teams meet — but New York does it with more talent and all four lines.
The coach was pushing this hard, too.
You know, I praised Johnston upon arrival and deep into the season, primarily because his Xs and Os seemed a perfect match for the personnel and in preparing for the playoffs. That faded as he wavered and the team floundered, obviously, but the principle originally put into place can still work. The modern NHL game is all about puck possession, and that’s bolstered by support. That’s what Johnston is all about.
If he still has faith in what he only recently preached, this is an excellent time to show it.
And an even better time for his players to demonstrate it … with gusto.
1. Believe
Very, very few do. I sure don’t, at least not until I see the first power-play goal. You’ll note that I’ve given up on that concept so completely it wasn’t even cited.
But we don’t matter. They do.
If the Penguins somehow, someway can shrug off their March/April misery, recall the victories against Western Conference powers and possibly even embrace their rare underdog position, then they’ll at least enter the process with hope. And that should never be lightly discarded, especially not for a collective that within the past week alone had veterans describing its psyche as “fragile.”
“There’s no reason for this team not to have confidence,” Nick Spaling said. “I don’t sense that.”
“We know what we can do,” David Perron said.
“I kind of like this, to be honest,” Fleury said. “It’s really so different from anything a lot of us have experienced here. Nobody expects us to do anything. Everyone thinks we’ll lose.”
He flashed that trademark smile.
“What if we don’t think that?”