Friday Insider: The brilliantly diagrammed play

EDMONTON, Alberta -- Ever since the Friday Insider was born, we've offered news, other inside information and various stuff behind the scenes. Readers always prefer the personnel stuff -- trades, signings, etc. -- and I get that. But my own leanings have always been toward moments inside the competition.

What made a play happen or not?

Sometimes it's simple, singular initiative or athleticism. With all the superstars we see in Pittsburgh, that's most often the case. But other times, there's a story behind it, a sequence of events or conversations that provided the spark, and I find those a blast to dig up.



So, this was the opening faceoff of the Penguins' game Wednesday night in Winnipeg:



What's seen up there is Justin Schultz getting a clean breakaway and shot on goal, though too high, in the first nine seconds of a game.

Maybe that escaped attention because it resulted in nothing more than a slashing penalty on the Jets, but it shouldn't have.

This was a defenseman going in all alone.

And yeah, this was a set play. At least from my perch in the press box hanging over ice level right by the Winnipeg blue line, I was thinking it had to be a set play.

So with a fresh perspective Thursday, while covering the Penguins' practice here at the Oilers' new arena, Rogers Place, it occurred to me that I could bear down and try to get answers. It's not as tough as it is in football, where Xs and Os are a trade secret, so it seemed feasible.

Naturally, I started with Schultz.

"What play?" he came back through that gap-toothed grin. "I don't know what you're talking about,"

OK, maybe this wasn't going to be easy.

I poked around a little more and, soon enough, confirmed at least that it was, in fact, diagrammed. By whom, I wasn't told, but here's guessing that the noted commander of all things Penguins, Mike Sullivan, had a significant say.

It starts, obviously, with Crosby cleaning the Jets' Bryan Little on the draw. After which Little does what every good center does following a lost faceoff and he tracks his counterpart. So Crosby's part is done.

By design.

Crosby skates, seemingly pointlessly over to the left edge of the neutral zone, because what he's actually hoping to achieve is to create a lane up the middle for Conor Sheary.

But first, the defensemen have to do their thing. Crosby pulls the puck back to Brian Dumoulin, who's supposed to draw as many Jets his way as possible, look across to his partner Schultz, fake a pass that way, then go up the left wing to Chris Kunitz.

Check, check and check.

Here's where it gets tricky, though: Schultz is to charge up the right side, the moment Dumoulin makes his pass. And Kunitz, the most experienced guy on the ice, is tasked with firing a pass to two targets at once, both of which should be in a line for him. The closest is Sheary, who starts moving up the middle. And beyond Sheary is Schultz.

Still with me?

OK, good, because Sheary now has to pull off the old Mario Lemieux dummy play. You know the one from the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, where No. 66 intentionally allowed a Chris Pronger pass to bypass him, while faking a shot and letting Paul Kariya to his left dump it into the open side of the net:



It was the greatest assist of Lemieux's career, and he never touched the puck.

Back to Sheary: He's supposed to judge in a split-second if he's got a lane or not. If he does, he's supposed to accept the pass. If not, he's supposed to make some kind of motion with his blade to feign accepting it while actually allowing it to go through to Schultz.

Go back up there and watch Josh Morrisey, the Winnipeg defenseman wearing No. 44. Look at how badly he bites on Sheary, coming 30 feet laterally to try to cut him off. I mean, wow, it's like he was an extra in the movie.

So the puck does get through, and Schultz has the Trans-Canada Highway in front of him. And the Jets are such a mess that it's a forward, Nikolaj Ehlers, who's forced to chase him all the way back.

It all went off with perfect precision, right?

Well ...

"Honestly, I did try to catch the pass," Sheary told me, a bit sheepishly. "I could say anything, though, you know?"

Yeah, he could.

I mentioned to Crosby that the Penguins should do this to open every game until it works right though the finish.

"Ha!" the captain came back. "It's on tape now. The whole league's seen it."

• All of the above is something to ponder when anyone mentions that the Penguins are fast. They aren't just fast skaters. They're fast passers and fast thinkers.

• Been fascinating to see how much more comfortable Marc-Andre Fleury has been since the NHL trade deadline has passed. He clearly grasps it's immensely unlikely he'll return to Pittsburgh next season, but the burden of a midseason move has been lifted and, coincidentally or not, he looks like he's having a blast on and off the ice again.

• Good for Sullivan for going against the coaching grain and taking the initiative Wednesday night to disclose that Kris Letang's injury was not a concussion or related to his heart/stroke issues of the past. Sullivan is hardly obsessed with what's written or spoken on the outside, but he's aware. And he correctly sensed that the speculation about this player, as well as the passion Pittsburgh fans have long had for him, were beginning to boil over.

• Weird thing about Patric Hornqvist's concussion: No one can really pinpoint how or when it happened. That's rare.

FROM JOSH YOHE IN PITTSBURGH

• The development of Daniel Sprong, he of the two point per game average in the QMJHL, will be interesting. Make no mistake, Jim Rutherford loves the kid and believes he has the potential to be a superstar.

Is the coaching staff as enamored with him? It's tough to say. Mike Johnston very clearly did not trust the kid last season. Will Mike Sullivan? Time will tell.

I believe Sprong will get a taste of AHL playoff action this spring. And I believe he'll be on the opening day roster next season. The talent is just off the charts.

• You know who thinks Sprong is going to be a star? Mike Lange. I normally don't go out of my way to mention other members of the media and their thoughts on certain players. But come on, this is Mike Lange we're talking about. Every time I bring up Sprong's name, Mike just shakes his head. In a good way.

• Ask Crosby and Evgeni Malkin if they feel more comfortable with Tom Sestito on the ice, and they'll give you a very emphatic "yes." This should count for something, right?

• Sheary has been quite impressive in this three games since returning from injury. I asked one of the Penguins last week to name the player on the roster that is most under-appreciated around the league.

"Sheary," the player said. "And it's not even close. Do you know how good he is?"

The rest of the hockey world is starting to find out.

FROM MATT GAJTKA IN PITTSBURGH

• Ian Cole seems a jovial sort, so I figured he wouldn't mind my noting that he's fallen a bit off his blocked-shot pace in recent games. At 157, he's still a shoo-in to break Rob Scuderi's team record of 164, but he's slowed somewhat lately, getting 'just' six in his past five games.

"It's not like I can go looking for shots to block," he said, playfully protesting.

• Cole said he can't recall all the bruises he's sustained due to shot-blocking over the years, but when I asked him about his most painful block this season, his mind raced back to that remarkable 8-7 home win over the Capitals back in January.

In the third period of that one, Cole took an Alex Ovechkin slap shot to the chest, but the injury wasn't as relevant to Cole as the result: T.J. Oshie scored immediately on the rebound. Cole said he laid on the ice for a while after that one, pondering what he could've done differently.

"Maybe next time I'll try to redirect it with my chest like those guys," Cole said, pointing to a dressing room TV that was displaying English Premier League soccer.

• Count Chris Kunitz as a believer in Winnipeg's considerable home-ice advantage, even though the Jets have a losing record at MTS Centre this season. Although, to hear Kunitz tell it, it's all about surviving the opening stages, when the Jets partisans are especially energized.

"They really feed off their crowd in the first 10 minutes or so," said Kunitz, a native of neighboring Saskatchewan. "It's the best atmosphere in the league."

FROM MARK KABOLY IN PITTSBURGH

• It's free agency season. What that means is this: Don't believe what you read ... or see on Twitter.

This is the time of year for great misinformation getting spewed out of every agent's mouth in the country. It's simple Sports Agent 101: Your client has one offer and to make that offer better, tell certain reporters there is "interest" from other teams.

Hence the reports on the Steelers interest in Dre Kirkpatick and Logan Ryan. Interest is one thing, real interest is another.

Like I always say, I'm interested in buying a Ferrari, but that interests disappears when I see the price tag.

The moral of the story is don't always believe what you read during free agency.

•  The top four cornerbacks that came off the free agency board on the first day -- A.J. Bouye, Stephon Gilmore, Kirkpatrick and Ryan -- will make $13.5 million per year, $13 million, $10 million and $10 million. For a team like the Steelers that has about $10 million of cap space when all the exclusive rights and restricted free agents are tallied (which was Thursday) -- well, you don't have to be math major.

But we fall for it.

• You might not be thrilled, but the Steelers are more than thrilled to have Landry Jones back in the mix as the backup to Ben Roethlisberger for the low price of $2.2 million a year. Before you even say it, Zach Mettenberger is terrible. It was a solid signing by the Steelers.

• The Steelers will make a move in free agency. Trust me. Just give it a day or two when the crazy price of some of these players come down. They will  get their cornerback. You just have to be patient.

FROM DUSTIN DOPIRAK IN BRADENTON, FLA.

• I used a lot of words on Thursday to talk about how great of a spring Jose Osuna is having and how generally good he is as a player and how all his teammates think he's legit. (And I was pretty proud of this one, so, you know... SHAMELESS PLUG.)

But after we spoke to Clint Hurdle following the Pirates 10-8 win on Thursday, the one in which Osuna hit one halfway to the highway, I was leaning as hard as I have into the belief that Osuna will start the season in Triple-A.

The reason is that he's defensively redundant with the other players likely to make the roster.

It's not his fault in the least. He is, at least in the minds of several of the players who have been on his teams over the last seven years, the best defensive first baseman in the Pirates' minor league system. And he's become increasingly efficient as a corner outfielder since it became clear that Josh Bell is the future at first.

The numbers, though, don't look good. Presume on a 25-man roster there will be an even split between position players and pitchers. That's 13 position players. Eight of those go to the presume starters — Francisco Cervelli, Josh Bell, Josh Harrison, Jung Ho Kang, Jordy Mercer, Gregory Polanco, Starling Marte, Andrew McCutchen. 

That leaves five bench spots. One of those goes to a backup catcher, presumably Chris Stewart for now. So you're down to four. David Freese is a sure thing. Hurdle has already said John Jaso is on the club, and he plays first base and the outfield. Adam Frazier plays everywhere and he hit .301 last year in limited time, so it's hard to imagine he won't be one of the four.

So basically you have one more spot and you have three players fighting for it, — Phil Gosselin, Alen Hanson and Osuna. Gosselin was added just before spring training, and he has a fair bit of major league experience. Hanson is out of options and he has a lot of speed.

What Gosselin and Hanson can do that Osuna can't is play shortstop, and that appears to be a critical feature in Hurdle's mind at this point. When asked about playing Frazier, Gosselin and Hanson in the same lineup Thursday, he spoke to that point directly.

"We’re looking for a guy [at] the shortstop position, to be able to fill that as well," Hurdle said. "Knock on wood, not for a long-term situation but to give Jordy an opportunity to back away, to miss a game here and there. We’re prepping guys out at shortstop. We’re also looking at what their second-best positions are, trying to profile each one of them individually. Who shows the best ability to go to the outfield? Who’s best on a corner? Who’s best in the middle? We’re looking at a number of different things. That’s why actually we’re trying to get them out there with some repetition all at the same time, so they’re fresh on your mind, you’re watching them play with one another in a short sequence of events to see who work well at shortstop. Sometimes a guy’s better suited at second than he is at short. Sometimes a guy can go over to third, do a nice job as well as second. And we’re going to spin them in the outfield as well.

Frazier was a college shortstop at Mississippi State, and if the Pirates feel good enough about him there, Hurdle could conceivably leave the other two off the roster and keep Osuna. But they certainly don't seem to. Frazier played just two games at shortstop at Indianapolis last season and didn't play there with the Pirates even as he played second, third, center and left. In 175 games at short combined at advanced Single-A Bradenton in 2014 and Double-A Altoona in 2015, Frazier committed 52 errors. He played there Thursday, so they will obviously take a look at him, but making the team doesn't guarantee that he'll play shortstop.

But Frazier's bat is also too good to not be on the team, and if he can't play short they'll look to either Gosselin or Hanson, likely making the decision based on whether they value Gosselin's bat handling or Hanson's speed more.

Certainly, other factors could alter Hurdle's thinking, most notably the Kang situation. If Kang continues to have visa problems or if he's suspended by the league for his third DUI, that would open up a spot that Osuna could fill. Hurdle could also decide that having the option to move Kang to short is good enough to fill in for Mercer. There is still a lot of spring left, and I could easily be wrong here, so we'll see where this goes.

• Despite Thursdays struggles, I'd be stunned at this point to see anyone but Chad Kuhl get the No. 4 spot. He had the inside track and no one's taken it from him. Tyler Glasnow was really the only pitcher with the capability of passing him, and, well, you heard how Thursday went.

• It's extremely difficult to get any kind of read on relievers in spring training just because you never know who they're going to face, but Felipe Rivero looks really, really sharp right now.