Kovacevic: Why you don't mess with the core

Kris Letang couldn't shake my hand.

I extended my right hand to thank the man for his patience in answering a few questions after the Penguins' 6-2 carving of the Ducks tonight at Consol, and he offered back his left hand, awkwardly inverted over mine to try to make it work.

To which I had to ask: Really?

"Really," he replied. "It's OK. All I've got to do with it is play hockey."

Yeah, just that. Which is to say, all he's got to do with that right hand is fire a bullet 55 feet to Chris Kunitz's waiting screen and tip:





And then another for a Conor Sheary tip and a 2-0 lead in the opening 10 minutes:



You know, at some point this spring, the odds overwhelmingly suggest that the Penguins will be eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs. That's not pessimism. There are 30 teams, of which 16 qualify, and 15 go home unhappy.

If and when that happens to the local club, a vocal portion of the public will put forth a now-familiar hue and cry: Break up the core!

Don't lie. You've been there, too. We've all at least contemplated it.

And we're all that much dumber for it.

Here's the truth, as firm now as it's been at any point in the past decade: If the Penguins' core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Marc-Andre Fleury isn't the best in the NHL, then it's at worst second-best behind that of the Blackhawks' Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith and ... eh, sorry, I can't include Corey Crawford.

Here's a second truth: It's the teams with the great cores that compete for the Cup year after year. If it hasn't been the Blackhawks, it's been the Kings' Anze Kopitar, Tyler Toffoli, Drew Doughty and Jonathan Quick. Or it's been the Lightning. Or the newbie Stars. Or even these Ducks, who laid a rare egg on this night after rattling off six wins in a row.

Of course, it isn't easy to merge these two truths when it comes to the Penguins, who have reached the Eastern Conference final once since winning it all in 2009. If anything, they've been the oddball in this regard. They've had one of the top two or three cores in the league in that span, at least when healthy, but with no hardware to show for it.

As a result, fingers will tend to point toward the last men standing in the room when the lights went out. And in this case, it's been the same four men. They're the stars, they take up almost half the payroll, and they've been there the whole time, so it must be their fault. That's how it goes every spring, and that's how it'll go again this spring should they be one of the unfortunate 15 that falls short.

Which, to repeat, is a really dumb way to see this scenario.

The Penguins have been blessed beyond words with generational talents in Crosby and Malkin. Never, ever take that for granted, Pittsburgh. Just because Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr preceded them doesn't mean it's anything less than the most freakish occurrence in hockey history that all four played here.

Never take this for granted:



Or, my goodness, this:



Cam Fowler wasn't putting his stick into Crosby's sweater to slow him down. He was going for the full shish kebab. Crosby kept churning with those tree-trunk legs. He kept carving the ice until he was part of it. And he still roofed a shot over the glove of the NHL's most promising young goaltender, John Gibson.

Let me state this without ambiguity: Sidney Crosby is the best player in the world.

Not Kane. Not Alexander Ovechkin. Not Connor McDavid, certainly not yet.

Because no one else can do these things that we've been witnessing from Crosby over the past few weeks, in which he's scored at least a goal in his past seven games, in which he's piled up 22 points in his past 11 games, in which he's leading the league in goals since Christmas, in which he's leading the league in scoring since New Year's Day, in which he's come through with six game-winners, in which he's "somehow found another level," as Mike Sullivan adroitly worded it after this two-goal, two-assist output.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrX76eQ1mEo

And what's most impressive is that it's followed the most exasperating slump of his life. Don't downplay that. Don't dismiss his overall figures because of it. Any professional athlete in any sport will attest that nothing is harder in competition than overcoming a crisis of confidence.

Crosby hasn't just overcome it. He's obliterated it:



"It's been a pretty good run here lately," he said after this one, and no, for crying out loud, he wasn't talking about himself. He hates doing that.

To wit, I asked if he was having fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHilhYlxJss

Woo-hoo, right?

But that's how the truly great ones go. When they aren't great, they get down, they beat themselves up. When they are great -- or great again -- that's just the Earth spinning back onto its axis, nothing more.

Crosby is still great. Malkin is still great.

Letang can drive you loco, as he did again tonight in the first period by following up those two crisp assists with a mindblowing blunder in handing Ryan Getzlaf a breakaway goal, then taking a penalty with less than two seconds left. Still, you take all that from the league's No. 2 scoring defenseman at 1.02 points per game. Get this: The Penguins are 2-7-1 without Letang this season, 25-11-6 with him.

Take it from David Perron, now with the Ducks: "Tanger is the engine that makes that team go. I saw that for myself."

Letang isn't great, but he's knocked on that door.

Same goes for Fleury, who had his own mini-bounceback tonight by shrugging off a rare benching this past weekend in Florida and stopping 36 Anaheim shots. When he's himself, he's undeniably among the league's best handful at his position.

That's the core. And that's not the problem. It never has been.

The problems have varied over the years, from Ray Shero's disastrous drafts to Dan Bylsma's stubborn strategies to a string of some of the most unusual injuries and illnesses anyone could imagine striking the same team. But the biggest, regardless of blame, has been the lack of a supporting cast and a resultant lack of identity.

And you'd better believe the supporting cast and identity are inexorably linked. The core can offer the sensational, but the steadiness, the consistency, the 60-minute drive, even the chief strategy, comes from the supporting cast.

Listen to Crosby when I brought up the Penguins' generally superlative play of late, and he took turns pointing around the room: "I think we've gotten contributions from so many guys. You look at the guys up from Wilkes-Barre ... we've been hit pretty hard here by injuries, and those guys have really done the job."

He mentioned the fourth line's minute-plus shift that ended in Sheary's goal. And Oskar Sundqvist, playing his first NHL home game, blanketing Corey Perry. And recent acquisition Carl Hagelin for burying a dazzling breakaway of his own.

"We're believing in ourselves, in each other," the captain continued before a pause.

I swear, I knew what he'd say next.

"It feels, honestly, a little like 2008, when guys came up from the minors and gave us fresh legs, a fresh outlook, and really picked us up."

There was a midseason coaching change back then, too. You know how it wound up.

This team isn't there yet, to be kind. Even if the Wilkes-Barre kids keep pushing the pedal and the forward depth remains fine, another top-four defenseman is mandatory. That will be on Jim Rutherford, and I sure wouldn't bet against the guy who got Trevor Daley -- or any breathing body -- for Rob Scuderi.

But any shopping list that's so short, so simple, is eminently preferable to one that requires the GM to find, say, a first-ballot Hall of Fame center, a first-ballot Hall of Fame center, a Norris-caliber defenseman and a Vezina-caliber goaltender.

Remember that when the handshakes happen this spring.

Regardless of who's got the upper hand in that shake.