CALGARY, Alberta -- There are excuses, and then there are excuses.
The Penguins could have packed enough of those to put off any U.S. Customs agent when crossing the Canada-U.S. border overnight, this after a four-game, four-time-zone, six-day, one-hour-lost-to-stupid-daylight-savings-time and four-more-players-lost-to-injury road trip that culminated in a 4-3 shootout loss to the Flames on this Monday night at Scotiabank Saddledome.
But then, there's also no excuse for making excuses, right?
So, if you'll excuse Mike Sullivan ...
"We're a little bit depleted right now, but guys are playing hard, they're finding ways," the coach would say afterward. "We'd have liked to have gotten the two points here. It could have gone either way once it gets to a shootout. But certainly it was a big point for us. And that was a very hard team to play against."
Think you're seeing excuses in there?
No chance. Every syllable up there is cold, hard fact:
• 'A little bit depleted?' Yeah, that's a generous summation of missing seven holdovers from the Stanley Cup championship team, then losing yet another, Mark Streit, to a lower-body injury in the first period that required hospitalization. If the Penguins get any more depleted, their AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre will begin casting open tryouts.
• 'Playing hard?' Did you see all 17 of those blocked shots, and not just Evgeni Malkin's?
• 'Could have gone either way?' Oh, you bet. The Penguins and Flames traded great chances, multiple leads and even better goaltending between a resurgent Marc-Andre Fleury and Calgary's Brian Elliott. Shots were 35-30 for the Penguins, and their new No. 1 line of Sidney Crosby, Conor Sheary and Jake Guentzel again was almost comically dominant at times.
• 'Big point?' They don't get much bigger in the regular season than a point to tie the Capitals atop the NHL's overall standings in mid-March, with playoff musical chairs intensely underway.
• 'Very hard team to play against?' Well, all Calgary accomplished by claiming this shootout was a 10-game winning streak that's the franchise's longest since moving to Alberta. This was by far the Penguins' best opponent on the trip and, in turn, by far the best overall game.
So a 3-0-1 trip, amid all those circumstances, wasn't about to put off anyone?
"We gave a great effort and got some pretty good results out here," Crosby would say. "Guys are missing, and other guys are having to step up, but that's what you've seen on this trip. We've had a lot of that."
DK'S THREE THOUGHTS
1. They're starting to play Sully Hockey.
No one calls it that, but they might as well. It begins with smart but aggressive defensive posture, carries through a north-south approach up ice and focuses on ... well, every single step of it focuses on keeping the puck.
It's taken the better part of five months, even as it's taken a bus-sized ambulance's worth of injuries to become necessary, but it's here at last. This trip has cemented that more than any other sequence all winter.
