Kovacevic: Comparing Steelers, Penguins ... or is it too soon?

Dec 13, 2016 • 1:10 am

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Brief and to the Point ...

• Sometimes it's easy to forget our city is blessed with two of professional sports' most star-laden, most celebrated, most successful franchises.

And sometimes, like this past month, it's screaming in our faces.

The Penguins, the NHL's marquee team for the better part of the past three decades, are fresh off their fourth Stanley Cup championship in that span. They've had four superstars split up 15 of the past 28 scoring titles, with Sidney Crosby currently soaring toward yet another while performing at a level that ... wow, just wow:

That was Monday night at PPG Paints Arena, part of a 7-0 touchdown spike of the Coyotes that brought a sixth consecutive win.

The Steelers, the NFL's marquee team for ... well, for now and forever, have won six Super Bowl championships, more than anyone. They consume so much space in the Hall of Fame that Canton soon will need to annex surrounding communities to accommodate them. And they're currently on a four-game winning streak, with Le'Veon Bell performing at a level that ... wow, just wow:

And like their Pittsburgh predecessors this past summer, the Steelers have been resurrected from the dead six weeks before playoffs, they've pushed through a ton of public doubt, they've carved out an identity, they've stood by it through thick and thin, and they've built up an unmistakable momentum at the most meaningful possible point in the season.

"Yeah, I see where you're going with this," Lawrence Timmons replied Sunday in Orchard Park, N.Y., after I went there with this. "I can see that. I can."

He mentioned Evgeni Malkin's month-long injury last March, the one that should have shoveled dirt over the 2016-17 Penguins. Instead, it gave birth to HBK, as Nick Bonino took Malkin's place between Phil Kessel and Carl Hagelin.

"That's like Cam," Timmons said of the Steelers losing Cam Heyward just before this four-game winning streak. "Cam goes down, and maybe that's when we started to dig deeper for our own identity. Some guys had opportunities and ... we started to do some different things, bringing more blitzes, getting more aggressive. Guys maybe got a better idea of how they fit, how they can be selfish in our system."

By 'selfish,' he's referring to James Harrison's oft-repeated admonition that players focus on nothing other than doing their own jobs to the best of their ability.

And by 'identity,' Timmons again pointed back to the Penguins.

"They got faster. They started playing the way they wanted. They attacked. They were aggressive. They didn't change no matter what their opponent was doing. That's what we feel we've got going on here."

He took it no further, and with good cause. The Steelers have three games left. They've got nothing in hand. No playoff spot. No AFC North title, even though the Ravens' loss Monday night in Foxborough put them a game up. No assurance of anything other than having a hated rival awaiting them Sunday in Cincinnati.

As the same time ...

"I see it, man," he'd say before flashing a big L.T. smile. "And I like it."

• The Harrison 'selfish' theme has reached the point of gospel in the Steelers' room. It's not just the defensive guys, either. Even some on the offense are using it.

That this originates with a player not exactly known for vocal leadership over the years shouldn't be unappreciated. Maybe between the one-word motivation, his 38 years of age, and Mike Tomlin now using him on every snap, it's looking like he'll not only play a huge role in what lies ahead but also provide a singular rallying point.

• I'm trying to think of something more cowardly than the Giants whining to a national reporter about the Steelers deflating footballs without filing such a serious complaint with the NFL. Alas, I'm coming up empty.

• Is there a reason Bell's name never comes up in MVP talk?

He missed the first three games to a suspension, and he's still fourth in the league with 1,053 yards rushing, second in yards per game at 105.3 behind the Cowboys' Ezekiel Elliott at 107.1. He's also got 563 yards receiving on 67 catches, making for a total of 1,616 yards from scrimmage. That's third in the league, behind the Cardinals' David Johnson at 1,830 and Elliott at 1,714. But again, both those men played three more games than Bell.

Should Bell be rewarded for his suspension?

Of course not. And that's not what I'm suggesting.

Rather, it's value to the team. And with three games remaining, given Bell's pace of late, he might well pass everyone in yards rushing and from scrimmage.

He shouldn't need to be a quarterback to enter the conversation.

• The Ravens' second-half rally in New England late Monday night fell short, but they'll show up here on Christmas feeling even better about themselves for having battled that way.

They're way too annoying to just go away.

• Among many areas where Tomlin deserves credit for the past month's reversal is his handling of the outside linebackers. It couldn't have been easy to commit to a 38-year-old starter. It couldn't have been easy to commit to Bud Dupree after he missed half the season and hadn't really proven himself before that. It couldn't have been easy to outright bench another first-rounder, Jarvis Jones, a guy he called 'special' on the day he was drafted.

It's convenient for any of us, myself included, to fuss over game details, clock management and the like. But it's decisions like this, or Mike Sullivan's HBK creation, that make by far the biggest difference.

• Watching Trevor Daley buzz all over the Arizona zone through the Penguins' power plays Monday made for powerful vindication of Sullivan's switch to two defensemen on the points. Daley moved so much he was a clear distraction to the Coyotes, even as the Penguins kept creating around him.

It was stunning at times, as this 43-second clip will wonderfully illustrate:

https://vimeo.com/195410592

• Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are tied for the team scoring lead at 32 points. Kessel is one point back.

Yet another reminder that, when making a trade, try to wind up with the best player in that trade. It ends up working out far, far more often than not. Make the other kind at your own peril.

• In 1999, the Hockey Hall of Fame waived its mandatory three-year waiting for period to induct Wayne Gretzky. After that, the Hall board decided it would never do that again, having done so for only nine other players, including Mario Lemieux after his initial retirement in 1997.

This was one of only a billion signs of how much the Hall is excessively influenced by Canadians. Because they'd never dare denigrate Gretzky by bestowing such an honor again.

Here's what I hope: I hope Jaromir Jagr plays until he's 70.

I hope Jagr, who currently has 755 goals, can catch Gordie Howe (801) and even Gretzky (894).

I hope Jagr forces that ultimate old-boys institution to waive its own ridiculous anti-waive declaration.

And I further hope that all the people left in hockey who feel that nothing about Gretzky should ever be touched live long enough to someday watch a new commissioner open up the game so that all scoring records can again be threatened, as they are in every other sport on the planet on a regular basis.

• Saturday at PirateFest, Neal Huntington spoke the following to fans about trading two top-10 prospects from his system to Toronto so that the Blue Jays would take on Francisco Liriano's salary: “I understand it because, as the narrative came out, we traded those two prospects for salary relief."

The narrative, he called it.

Within mere seconds, he said, "So the Liriano trade was for financial relief."

I kid you not.

In between and after those remarks, he attempted to clarify that there were somehow two distinctly separate transactions within one: "Drew Hutchison was a guy with years of control, that had some success at the major-league level, that had some indicators, and so we traded two good prospects for Drew Hutchison. In a parallel transaction, we moved Francisco Liriano to get some financial flexibility to add to this year’s club."

Right. And thus, to summarize:

1. The Pirates traded Reese McGuire and Harold Ramirez, who currently rank as the Nos. 4 and 5 prospects in the Toronto system, for Hutchison, a 26-year-old non-prospect who's made 74 major-league starts with a 4.93 ERA, or half-a-run higher than Jeff Locke's career 4.41 ERA.

2. Liriano was moved for the infamous "financial flexibility," no doubt to help overcome Pittsburgh being a pathetic "small market" -- a term the front-office guys used all weekend to mask the pittance of a local TV deal they negotiated -- but the company line remained that all significant free agents are too expensive. So really, the "financial flexibility" claim amounts to the usual backpedal months later, as opposed to, you know, an actual baseball player of any worth, much less the $17.6 million they saved on Liriano.

Seriously, who still falls for this garbage?

• Here's another from Huntington: “We’re proud of the fact we’ve had the fifth-best record in baseball over the past five years. We’re not cherrypicking our three playoff years and saying we’ve got the second- or third-best record in baseball. We’re talking about a five-year run."

Uh, no. Picking five years out of nine is the epitome of cherry-picking. This front office took over in late 2007. The coming season will be their 10th. They've had three winning records. In a decade.

• Coonelly had his own 'narrative' episode, saying of the overwhelming perception that the Pirates prioritize profiting over winning: "That narrative is really tired. I’m so tired of the narrative. … There is nothing more that we want to do — not for us, but for you — than to win a World Series championship here in Pittsburgh. That’s why we do what we do."

He then told people like me and people like you that we really shouldn't be discussing this sort of stuff. Because, you know, he thinks he can do that.

“I get it. It’s a long winter. I can’t wait until spring comes," Coonelly said. "We need, in the media and otherwise, to talk about a lot of things. But the narrative that we don’t care about winning is just flat wrong. It’s offensive, too, but that’s another matter. I try not to get offended by these things.”

Clearly. Three winning seasons out of nine. Nine sizably profitable seasons out of nine.

What exactly was 'offensive' again?

• I'd love to talk about baseball. Just baseball. I've loved the sport my whole life, and I've followed the Pirates more closely than any team since my childhood, even into my journalism career by being on that beat.

These guys make that impossible. They think you're idiots. And I can't stand for that.

• Bob Nutting didn't show up for PirateFest this weekend, at least not visibly. That's a deep disappointment. He used to be there on Sundays, greeting people at the door, shaking hands, taking time to hear what they had to say.

That's not the Bob Nutting I've known.

• If the owner of the franchise has so little faith in his own product that he can't show up for its most prominent promotional event all year, its best chance by far to connect with fans, then he'd better be powerfully contemplating a change. Including his own involvement in this endeavor.

• I've got nothing else. Even thinking about the state of baseball in this town, never mind writing about it, is enough to make me slam this laptop shut.

When do the local teams that care play again?