EDMONTON, Alberta -- The stage was set, and then it was stolen.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 40 saves and Phil Kessel buried a beauty in the shootout to seal the Penguins' 3-2 victory over the Oilers on Friday night at Rogers Place, as well as to steal the spotlight from a matchup of two generational NHL talents, Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid.
Just before that, Crosby and McDavid traded top-shelf conversions in the shootout, the veteran matched by the kid in both substance and style:
But all that achieved was a tie through 2 1/2 rounds. Which is when Kessel did this very bad thing to Cam Talbot:
"Hey, we won, right?" Kessel would tell me afterward. "That's what counts."
Yep. No doubt. But the how, in this case, matters almost as much.
Nick Bonino and Evgeni Malkin had built a 2-0 lead in the first period, but the Oilers got goals from David Desharnais in the second and McDavid in the third to tie a game that Mike Sullivan would later call "one of the fastest-paced we've played all season." The ice was characteristically crisp here with temps outside at minus-2, the skating was up and down, the chances traded back and forth ... and the whole way, there was one constant above all.
"He was terrific," Sullivan would beam about Fleury. "I thought Marc was the difference."
DK'S THREE THOUGHTS
1. The Flower is blooming anew.
The save count won't spell it out. Even witnessing the two from a tennis-match overtime, the first on a McDavid breakaway, the other point-blank on Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, won't suffice:
No, this is three consecutive games now in which he's been the peak Fleury. He's been aggressive, athletic and ... man, for the first time maybe all winter, he looks like he's having a blast.
"Yeah, he was just ... one after another, as far as some of those saves he made," Crosby would tell me. "They weren't easy ones, either. Traffic in front. Breakaways. Other clean looks. He was ... incredible tonight."
The captain shook his head and smiled slightly.
"It's fun to see him like that. You can tell when he gets that mindset that he's having fun out there. And he had a lot of fun tonight."
That's been the story of Fleury's life, not just his career. As a babyfaced teen growing up in northern Quebec, he and his younger sister Marylene, an even better athlete in the eyes of the family, would play shooter-and-keeper in the backyard grass of their single-story home. And the two played only in the literal sense of the term. It was serious business. They were diving, leaping, kicking, screaming, probably biting somewhere in there.
I saw this for myself when traveling up to Sorel-Tracy shortly after Fleury was drafted No. 1 overall in 2003, and it's never left me. Especially on nights like this.
Fleury and I don't talk about that time too often. We did after this.
"Yeah, I remember," he said. "To me, hockey's always been about having fun, about getting a lot of shots and making the saves. That never changed for me."
Didn't it?
One could reasonably posit a theory that, since the NHL trade deadline passed and Fleury's still in the only place he'd ever want to play, he's bought himself a respite, if not outright relief. He seems to grasp that he'll be gone when the upcoming playoffs are done, but he also seems poised to savor every second, every save of it.
"I feel good. I'm happy," was all he'd say to that. Other than the big grin. "I'm going to enjoy every time I play."
"It is different," McDavid would acknowledge of facing Crosby. "To say it's a normal game would be lying. Obviously, he's someone I've looked up to my whole life. To play against him is fun. It was probably to my advantage, since it's easier for me to get up to play against him than it is for him to get up to play against me."
Well, yeah. At least the kid got it. Everyone around him, not so much.
From the Penguins' perspective, including Crosby, this was another game on another night, one they again had to survive while missing a big chunk of their roster. Crosby answered all the questions, before and after, with the usual grace, but he was always careful to not single out McDavid, instead including among an impressive generation of scoring forwards to have recently entered the NHL.
To wit, this from afterward: "I think guys like Connor are coming into the league and having a lot of success early. They're getting a great opportunity to play and deservedly so. These guys are elite players for a reason and they're showing it."
Crosby does that because he knows it lightens the load on the kid. Maybe a few folks here could take the hint.
If not, they might take the one from Sullivan, who snapped back at a local reporter's question about "Crosby vs. McDavid" by saying, "It was the Pittsburgh Penguins against the Edmonton Oilers."
THREE NUMBERS OF NOTE
3 -- Points between the Penguins and Capitals, the NHL's overall leader with 95
24 -- Percent of faceoff wins for the visitors -- 11 of 45 -- which underscores the loss of Cullen and that, well, the Penguins just aren't all that great on draws
14-3-2 -- The Penguins' record over the past seven years in Western Canada, specifically here, Vancouver and Calgary
THE NEXT GAME
Won't have to wait long. An overnight flight to British Columbia will lead coldly into a 10:08 p.m. faceoff at Rogers Arena. The Canucks have lost eight of 11.