NEW YORK -- So here's guessing Project Assimilate Geno is underway, right?
I mean, wow, what a powerful, if predictable, uprising for Evgeni Malkin, with two goals, two assists and twice the smarts he'd shown before the Penguins routed the Rangers, 5-0, Thursday night in Game 4 of their Stanley Cup playoff series at Madison Square Garden.
He was, in the words of Ian Cole, "dominant in a way no one else can dominate."
He was all that and a heaping helping of borscht.
And yet, if I'm being fully forthright here, I was more impressed by something else.
Check that. Everything else. Because item by item, I see this increasingly special group gunning down all the various ills that have held the franchise back for half a decade now when the games get meaningful.
To check off at least 10 ways already:
✓ MENTAL STRENGTH
✓ PENALTY-KILLING
"Those guys, they quietly go about their business," he said. "They're on the same page. They make good reads. They're willing to block shots. They do a lot of the little things that don’t necessarily show up on the score sheet or are difficult to quantify. That’s what makes the penalty kill as good as it is. They're a selfless group."
I pressed Cole on what highly specific trait makes the group solid, and he didn't hesitate.
"Oh, easy," he said. "It's our ability to keep passes from going through the middle."
Like the Flyers love to do with Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek and Wayne Simmonds?
"Exactly. It's the one thing you can't allow. And if you're successful in pressuring and cutting off those lines, it really makes you that much more confident as a group. Because now you're keeping everyone to the outside."
✓ GOING TO THE NET
Remember Rask in that Boston sweep?
Remember how he'd go periods at a time without anyone from the Penguins broaching his area code, much less his crease?
Well, the resonating beauty of Jim Rutherford's acquisition of Patric Hornqvist -- even in the context of James Neal blossoming in Nashville -- is that the roster finally had someone, anyone, willing to get his hands dirty in the name of scoring. Hornqvist has been the Penguins' single most relentless, consistent performer from the day he arrived, and that's hardly changed in these playoffs with the Game 1 hat trick and this screen Thursday:
✓ SPEED
“I was pretty nervous," he said at the Garden podium, a space reserved for the game's standout, though you wouldn't detect that from his tone. "I'm nervous before every game, obviously these last two more than usual. But I thought I did a good job of controlling that."
Yeah, 31 saves in this one for the shutout, 47 of 48 for the two games. And that's to say nothing of the caliber of some of those, coming at a level that can knock the air from an opponent already starved for offense.
Sullivan spoke the truth when asked for the umpteenth time about Murray's demeanor: "He knows he's good."
I've no doubt where this discussion will go next, but there's no need: Murray will be the goaltender for Game 5, and Marc-Andre Fleury still awaits clearance from his concussion, this after an apparent setback here this week. Between Murray's poise and Jeff Zatkoff's ability to come in cold, the Penguins appear much more set at this position than they could have had a right to expect minus Fleury.
No controversy to be found there.
