Thursday night at PPG Paints Arena belonged to Sidney Crosby, but it was Evgeni Malkin who beat the Jets' best defenseman, then beat the Jets, 4-3, by setting up this beach-by-the-ocean chip shot for Crosby with 21.1 ticks left in overtime.
Behold poor Jacob Trouba beating eaten alive by Malkin on this power rush through the Winnipeg right circle:
Charitable contributions are now being accepted by the Trouba Foundation in lieu of flowers.
And that's to say nothing of goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, who bit so badly with that pokecheck that he might as well have been reaching back to Manitoba.
"Great play by Geno," Crosby said. "Just a great play."
Maybe Malkin's last one for a spell, too.
The NHL Department of Player Safety reviews all head shots that are penalized, and Malkin delivered one of those in the third period to the Jets' Blake Wheeler for which he reasonably should have been penalized much more harshly than the interference minor assessed by referees Marc Joannette and Jean Hebert.
Angles from the front and back are equally ugly:
Wheeler would leave the game for a few minutes, then returned after clearing the NHL's concussion protocol. And that would be just about the only thing working in Malkin's favor if he's summoned to make a case to the league:
• He lines up Wheeler while nearby Mark Stuart clears the puck from the Winnipeg zone. That's the interference that was called.
• He strides toward Wheeler from the right faceoff dot to the left hash, plenty enough to at least raise that charging occurred.
• Most egregiously by far, he angles his right shoulder toward Wheeler's head. And because both his skates leave the ice before Wheeler's head becomes the principal point of contact ... well, that's the biggest no-no these days in the NHL, at least per the league's word if not always its deeds.
Add all that up, and it could amount to a suspension, a significant fine or, given the league's rampant inconsistency in administering supplemental discipline, nothing at all.
Neither Malkin nor Wheeler was available for comment, and no one else from either side remarked on the matter, either. But the Jets' anger didn't require a translator, as they immediately chased down Malkin near the Penguins' bench and took repeated swings his way. Even Wheeler, after being briefly visited on the ice by the athletic trainer, stormed that way and tried to no avail to pry Malkin out of the pile.
The Penguins play Friday night in Columbus, so any NHL decision on the hit will have to come quickly.
DK'S THREE THOUGHTS
1. Suspend Malkin.
At least for a game.
Yeah, I know the intended market for this site and, as a result, that I've got as much chance of getting agreement with this thought as Hellebuyck had of stopping Crosby's winner. But in the same breath, few franchises would theoretically benefit from a competent, consistent Department of Player Safety more than the Penguins. Because if that kind of hit, with that kind of malice, occurred to one of this team's stars, they'd have so much more to lose.
Were the Jets thuggish in this game?
Absolutely, and all over the ice.
Mike Sullivan stopped well short of accusing the opponent of foul play, but he did acknowledge the painfully obvious.
“I’m not surprised," he said. "That’s one of the elements Winnipeg has. They have a big team. They use their size and strength to help them win. We got off our game in the second period. We certainly didn’t play as well. We took a few penalties, which didn’t help. We got away from our game and, as a result, we were in our end zone a lot. But I felt we responded well in the third.”
"The four guys who remained did a really good job under difficult circumstances," Sullivan said. "I thought, under the circumstances, they did a pretty solid job.”
They won't figure in the Norris voting for it, given that the Jets registered 47 shots on Marc-Andre Fleury with many of those being golden chances, but no one complains after a W.
And on that note ...
3. Was this Fleury's last home game?
Hey, it's all fair game after the GM declares a high ambition level at the upcoming NHL trade deadline, as Jim Rutherford did in an exclusive interview with our Josh Yohe a couple nights ago. If there's going to be a major trade, it'll have to be accompanied by a major trim on the salary cap. Fleury is the most obvious candidate.
So, when hearing his name chanted through the third period and a spectacular overtime and a three-stars twirl, did he think about it at all?