Kovacevic: How Sullivan can build up from the back ... again taken at PPG Paints Arena (DK's Grind)

MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

Kris Letang and Olli Maatta fend off the Devils' Kyle Palmieri and Mike Cammalleri on Saturday night.

Mike Sullivan needed just one game as the Penguins' head coach, almost a year ago now, to fully grasp the whole slew of what was systematically missing from his group: They moved up the ice too slowly. They forechecked too meekly. They defended too loosely. Their idea of crashing the crease was cheering on Patric Hornqvist. Their idea of power-play productivity was trying to out-cute each other with perimeter passing.

The new guy absorbed it all, seemingly with the snap of a finger.

And yet, in that same snap, he also decided — and declared publicly — that he would begin building real cohesiveness, real consistency from the back and work his way up.

"It's got to start," he'd say at the time, "with defending."

It did, too. And it paid off handsomely, as I'm guessing you've heard. Because on that magical night of June 12 in San Jose, with the Penguins one period away from the Stanley Cup, they'd completely suffocate the Sharks in conceding only two shots.

One.

Two.

That's where Sullivan's work began and, for that spectacular season, where it ended.

But the cycle has begun anew, including, most regrettably, that part where the Penguins have all kinds of inconsistencies, game to game, even shift to shift. They're 13-6-3, which is wonderful, but that only partially masks a meek plus-1 goal differential, the rallies needed for three victories trailing heading into the third period, and the five victories when being outshot.

They aren't there yet. They aren't themselves yet.

Which is why I asked Sullivan over the weekend if he might, once again, focus on the five-on-five defensive play to fix all this flailing. His answer, as ever, didn't disappoint:

Don't know how you heard that, but it sure sounded like a yes to me.

So let's have at it, right?

Sticking with the defensive end for this conversation, the Penguins' five-on-five work in their own zone has been ... eh. They've given up 977 shot attempts — that includes blocks and misses — for the 10th-worst mark in the NHL. And if you erase the blocks from that figure, since the defense usually gets the credit for those, their 811 unblocked shot attempts against are the worst in the league.

That, of course, hurts all the numbers. Goaltending and scoring, too. So it really does need to start here because, without the puck, there isn't a whole lot a team can do to be productive.

Let's take a look at how the Penguins defend when, to borrow Sullivan's favorite phrase, they're "playing the game the right way." All three of the following sequences are from the first period of their 4-3 shootout victory Saturday over the Devils:

https://vimeo.com/193646868

Above, the Devils gain the blue line a bit too easily, but it's John Moore, a defenseman, and he's hardly an individual threat as he simply flicks the puck on Matt Murray.

So there's a shot on goal, which might be considered a decent shift on that count alone.

But keep watching after Olli Maatta removes the rebound from immediate danger, and Carl Hagelin tries unsuccessfully to chip it out up the boards. This is when possession's been lost. This is when the five-on-five defense has to get to work.

Follow the puck along the perimeter, and you'll first see New Jersey's Vern Fiddler. He's surrounded by four black-and-gold sweaters. He just glides the puck down behind the net. That's where Nick Lappin goes after it, but he's got both defensemen, Maatta and Kris Letang on him, something that Sullivan and Jacques Martin allow so long as the second defenseman on the scene is sure there's plenty of support behind him.

"We trust each other," Maatta explained to me. "We read off each other and make the play."

They really do. The two work and talk relentlessly on and off the ice. Their team-up here is anything but an accident, and it originates with them, not the coaches.

Anyway, Letang pries away the puck and does that Letang thing by twirling once to create his own continent of space, then feeds softly across to Maatta, then up to Phil Kessel, and it's off they go.

Anyone still remember that shot?

Me neither, so moving to later in the period ...

Up there is Ben Lovejoy dumping the puck deep into his former mates' zone. The wrap around the boards is hard enough — and designed well enough — that the Devils know to have numbers in the right corner even though Lovejoy shoots into the left. And sure enough, they get there first.

But here go the Penguins with numbers again. The moment Lappin secures possession along the boards, you'll notice pretty much the entire Pittsburgh franchise — all five skaters and Murray — are below the hash marks awaiting his next move.

This is what Sullivan calls "layering," and he repeats that a lot with his players. It isn't complex. It can't really be over-scripted. What he tells them, as he repeated for me a few days back in Buffalo, is this: "We want the other team to have to get through layers to get to our net."

He doesn't care who represents which layer. There's a general shape of the defense he wants his team to achieve, and that's far more important. He spent nearly half a practice session last week in Cranberry having his players simply grab a musical chair in those layers.

Back to the play now: The Devils send it around to the left, then back to the right, and the layers just casually follow them both ways. Nick Bonino has assumed maybe the most important layer spot in that he's right behind the first one. He's looking for a pass to intercept or a puck to pop loose. And though he's struggled to score, he's always sharp in that area.

True to form, he gets it after a firm Scott Wilson check, then Wilson calmly sends it back to Bonino, then Justin Schultz and Trevor Daley go D-to-D behind their net, and out it goes.

I'll repeat the word calmly because it's important. In a tight-support system, a player is far less likely to panic with the puck knowing a mistake won't get him killed.

One more of these ...

Above is another deliberate dump for the Devils, another successful retrieval. Eventually, the puck is sent back behind the Penguins' net where, again, both defensemen converge in Ian Cole and Steve Oleksy. The latter spends most of his time in the minors, but Sullivan reiterated earlier last week that the systems and philosophies in Pittsburgh and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton are always kept similar for occasions like these.

To close it out, Oleksy and Eric Fehr each attempts a hard hit on the far boards. The contact isn't sensational, but they inject enough chaos to that the puck pops loose to another layer. That's Cole. And once Cole collects, you'll see Bryan Rust and the rest of the forwards move with him, tightly, to skate it out with speed.

There's no rocket science happening here. There really isn't.

Sullivan's same philosophy applies to, say, the opponent rushing up ice with speed ...

... or a routine lost draw in the defensive zone:

Numbers, numbers, numbers. And lots of layers.

This, my friends, is the real reason opponents hate playing the Penguins when they're at their best. As they were against the Sharks. As they were just last week at Madison Square Garden when the Rangers went 21 minutes without a solitary shot.

Because their speed not only creates the obvious offense but also, when applied with precision and passion, creates for a constant feel that they're outnumbering bodies at the puck all over the rink.

"We've got speed, and people always think of scoring goals when you talk about speed," Hagelin said. "But speed can be huge for you defensively, too."

No need to wait for the flowers to bloom to find out.

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