COLUMBUS, Ohio -- "Big game. Rivalry. Huge game."
So spoke Sergei Bobrovsky after his Blue Jackets outlasted the Penguins in overtime, 2-1, Friday night at Nationwide Arena. And I've experienced plenty enough in the heart of Ohio in recent years to know the man meant every syllable.
Big game. Rivalry. Huge game.
To which I'll respond: No. No. Wow, dude, no.
"It's great," the Blue Jackets' Brandon Dubinsky offered with a broad grin. Only he wasn't referring to his point-blank wrister that brought the decisive goal. He was talking about, of all things, the atmosphere at a regular-season game in mid-February, as it pertained to Columbus fans outnumbering their Pittsburgh counterparts in their own building. "I mean, you'd hear their fans start a chant, and ours would drown them out."
Riotous laughter followed.
I came here to write about what, theoretically, might have been a meaningful regular-season game. Looked forward to it, even. But it wasn't that. It wasn't close.
These Penguins and Blue Jackets are on a collision course, though hardly an inevitable one, to meet in the first round of Stanley Cup playoffs. But all this buildup here, as ever, came across as silliness bordering on creepy obsession. John Tortorella calls it a "big rivalry" even though he's been part of real ones in the past. One of the Columbus players told our site he "can't believe how big people here treat this." Before this one, the arena's in-game host on the big board asked his partner: "I know people in Pittsburgh don't see this as a rivalry the way we do, but is it?"
No. Wow, dude, no.
Merriam-Webster defines the word as "a state or situation in which people or groups are competing with each other," and it offers as its primary example sentence: "There is a bitter/friendly rivalry between the two groups."
The operative figure there is two. As in, not one.
Look, the Penguins showed up here fresh off losing Justin Schultz and Olli Maatta, with the team as a whole having been punished physically in that game by the Jets, with Conor Sheary and Bryan Rust still out, and with the Blue Jackets having been fully rested here and waiting to pounce.
This wasn't a preview of anything other than maybe the next 'Walking Dead.'
"It was a tough game to play," Evgeni Malkin said, and he was referring to the circumstances, not the outcome. "Losing those defensemen, playing last night, everything."
Yep. And I'd have written this if the Penguins had prevailed by a touchdown, it meant almost nothing.
In the same breath, though, I'll add that almost nothing isn't nothing.
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“He’s as good right now as he’s been all season," Brian Dumoulin would say after this game. "For the D-core, it keeps you nice and relaxed when you see the way he’s seeing the puck right now.”
That view isn't isolated. If anything, it's understated in scope. The Penguins' players, especially the tenured vets, love Fleury like a brother and respect his work as much as ever. But in their own way -- and I'm trying to find the right way to phrase this -- they know that their new No. 1 goaltender is the No. 1 goaltender on merit, not just because of age or cap or any other concerns.
They also know that he's got his own brand of good makeup.
You know, There's been plenty of talk in recent months about how well Fleury has handled the ongoing situation, sitting at the end of his team's bench for the first time since childhood. And he's been tremendous. He's an exceptional human being, something I've experienced since accompanying him to his home in northern Quebec after being drafted in 2003. Whenever he leaves, he'll be missed.
But let's also view it from the other perspective and appreciate that Murray has been an equal in this way. This kid raised the Cup as a rookie, but he was legit. That was no passenger who outdueled Henrik Lundqvist, Braden Holtby, then the best possible versions of Andrei Vasilevskiy and Martin Jones. He'd have had at least reasonable cause to expect the crease would be his in 2016-17.
He never complained, never hinted at any dissatisfaction. He waited his turn.
And now that Mike Sullivan has dispensed with all drama on this front, anointing Murray in the most powerful way possible -- putting him between the pipes again and again -- he's finally, fully the man. He'll probably be right back out there Sunday against the Red Wings. He'll probably be out there in Raleigh a couple days later. And you'd better believe he's earned the right to his own outdoor game next Saturday at Heinz Field against the Flyers.
Has anything changed for him?
"I'm feeling good, but I always feel that way," he pretty much repeated. "I've got to stop the puck."
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