Down goes Conor Sheary.
Initially of his own intuition, then right off the rink:
And now, he's right out of the lineup.
That occurred midway through the first period of the Penguins' 6-2 humbling by the Flyers on this all-around forgettable Sunday night at PPG Paints Arena, but the more significant loss was that of Sheary, who Mike Sullivan described afterward as having a 'lower-body injury' without delving into any detail beyond his status being 'day-to-day.'
That's most unfortunate.
Not just because Sheary had been emerging into an outright force alongside Sidney Crosby, with 21 goals and 54 points in 59 games.
Not just because it's now both Sheary and Jake Guentzel lost from what had been a breathtaking line.
Not even because it's a blocked shot, since it wasn't. As Sullivan correctly if defensively noted, it was actually a pass. The Flyers' Claude Giroux was going hard over the middle when Sheary, as can be seen above, dropped to one knee with the stick flat, very much in a shot-blocking formation.
But hey, same difference. It's reflex. It's repetition in action.
And that's the part, I dare say, that's unfortunate.
Don't misunderstand, please. Credit where credit's due. I wrote an extensive piece just this week in praise of Ian Cole for becoming maybe the NHL's best shot-blocker. It takes genuine courage, and that's not a term to be used lightly in the largely unimportant world of sports. In turn, also applies to the collective, as we all applauded for two months last summer when Sullivan had the Penguins blocking everything in sight on the road to the Stanley Cup.
But praising performance doesn't preclude questioning whether or not blocking pucks matters as much as NHL coaches, very much including Sullivan, evidently think it does.
Let's toss out some mostly related randomness:
• According to the analytical site war-on-ice.com, 99.1 percent of shots from the point -- left or right -- result in a save. And I cite that because that's obviously the area where most willful blocks occur.
• According to a study by Canadian researcher Ari Yanover, a 20-game sample showed the following: A block resulted in yet another shot being attempted 35.6 percent of the time, and a shot resulted in yet another shot 33.9 percent of the time. A block resulted in a change of possession 23.6 percent of the time, and a shot resulted in a change of possession 17.8 percent of the time.
• Specific to the Penguins this season, they've lost eight players for various stretches because of blocks: Evgeni Malkin (shoulder), Matt Cullen (foot), Carl Hagelin (foot), Mark Streit (groin), Brian Dumoulin (face), Scott Wilson (leg), Patric Hornqvist (concussion) and now Sheary.
Add those up, weigh the many variations in those cases, and you're still ultimately left with losing several players and dozens of man-games to injury to stopping a puck that almost certainly will be stopped by a guy who almost certainly won't be hurt doing so.
Do the goals saved really out-value the games lost?
If all of the team's blocked shots all season long saved 20 goals -- and there's no way it'd be that many -- would it be worth all those players' participation?
It was no surprise Sullivan sounded a little edgy when asked after this game about the consequence of blocked shots. It's easily his least favorite subject for elaboration, just as it was, coincidence or not, for John Tortorella in the decade that Sullivan served under him as an assistant.
"Quite honestly, we really don't discuss it very much," he replied, referring to talks with his players. "You know, every team in the league blocks shots. It's just part of the game. We don't discuss it that much. We talk about being in lanes, being in passing diagonals ... defensive strategies. But we aren't different than any team in the league with how we approach team defense. We've played team defense the same way in my tenure here. We have some guys, unfortunately, who have gotten injured from it."
He paused.
"If you guys are alluding to Conor Sheary tonight, that wasn't from a blocked shot. That's misinformation already that I'm aware of."
Maybe he meant the NBC Sports national broadcast. No idea.
He then continued.
"It's part of the game that's instinctive. And so, like I said, I don't think we're any different from any other team. It's unfortunate that we are in the circumstance where we are. But it's really not something we discuss at length."
No, it isn't. I've heard that from the players, too.
Look, Sullivan is anything but disingenuous, and so I'll presume he isn't being disingenuous and suggesting it isn't encouraged or rewarded by the coaching staff. Because it's absolutely both. It gets explained in terminology like 'competing hard,' 'sacrificing' and that sort of stuff. But it's fascinating to see that an act which is perfectly legal in the NHL, as well as one that contributed to a championship, would have to be couched in any way.
I asked Cullen if, given the players who get hurt in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, blocking shots is worth it from the hockey standpoint.
"That's definitely a good question, a fair question," he replied. "The way guys shoot the puck in this league nowadays ... I don't know how many are over 100 mph, but there are a ton over 90, and I'm not sure there's much difference."
I'll interrupt to remind: Sheary's was nowhere near that. It was a pass by Giroux.
"But you know, it's a good question, and it's become such a big part of the game and ... obviously, you'd rather not see a guy like Geno do that, but it's part of the culture and it means a lot to your team when a guy goes down to do that. At the same time, I think it's a big part of our game, of what our team does. But it's a good question. I'm not sure I have that answer."
As Sullivan noted, all NHL teams block shots. The current gap runs from the Islanders' 1,250 at the top to the analytically-minded Panthers' 834 at the bottom. That's a real range, but it's not huge.
At the same time, it's undeniable that the Penguins do it more often than most: They rank fifth in the league with 1,194 blocks, or 15.9 per game, and that stands out all the more for the league's seventh-best possession team as measured by simple shot differential.
I don't like blocked shots, but I don't see it as a local issue at all. I've been writing for years that the league and the players' union should protect their most valuable assets by prohibiting a player from going down to the ice to block a shot. The column that's linked there was published from the 2015 NHL All-Star Game in Columbus, and it brought a predictable wave of howls from those who thought the concept unthinkable. Well, it actually came up earlier this month at the league's meeting of general managers, the men entrusted with such rule changes. That's where it starts.
I do think, however, that there can be a local component. It would behoove Sullivan, Jim Rutherford, the Penguins' analytics people and all concerned to do as much hard research as is required to be right on this. Not based on a hunch or old-school machismo but on real information.
There is a simpler way, and it just might be the right one: Tuukka Rask, the Bruins' outstanding goaltender, spoke recently in impassioned tones about why he's preferred Boston's longstanding method of simply boxing out for rebounds and letting him stop the puck: “Just stay in the lane and try not to play goalie. A lot of times when you try to stop it like a goalie, you open up holes and screen the goalie even more. Our guys do a pretty good job of focusing on the puck, staying in the lane, and not trying to do too much.”