Kovacevic: Skate, create, intimidate ... above all, don't wait

Brief and to the Point ...

• The Penguins are faster than the Blue Jackets. This is fact.

The Blue Jackets are reeling, having lost six of their final seven in the regular season. This, too, is fact.

There's so much to be debated and dissected in advance of the first-round Stanley Cup playoff series that opens Wednesday night, even involving elements off the ice. And if both teams were entering with similar trajectories, all of those might be applicable. But they aren't. Which is why, for now, I'd prefer to condense the whole thing to those two factual statements above.



If the Penguins skate and create as they have pretty much all season and they add a thoroughly rejuvenated Evgeni Malkin, which they will, that's an element the Blue Jackets can't counter. They'll have Sidney Crosby, Conor Sheary, Bryan Rust, Jake Guentzel, Phil Kessel and others slipping around or squirting through a mostly immobile defense. If they're lucky, they'll have Carl Hagelin at some point, too. That speed provides an element, above any in hockey at any level, that intimidates. It might not happen on every shift, but it does over time, over a best-of-seven. The opponent gets tired. The opponent begins backpedaling. The opponent loses its legs, much less its will to bash everything in sight.

Remember Victor Hedman at the end of the Eastern Conference Final?

How about Marc-Edouard Vlasic in the Final?

Yeah, like that.

But here's the key, and I mean this in every way: That's got to happen immediately. First four shifts of Game 1 and again and again and again. The Penguins can't wait.

If they do, they'll give the Blue Jackets life they haven't had in a long while. They'll give confidence. And even if they go on to take the series, they'll have let it last two or three games more than they should.

The objective here, I'll remind, isn't to win a series. Or two. It's to win them all yet again. And to do that, I firmly believe, they'd immensely benefit from buzzing through the first round and facing the Capitals -- the NHL's No. 1 team and an opponent that will be coming off a 3 1/2-game sweep of the Maple Leafs -- as fresh, healthy and confident as possible.

Penguins in ... uh, 4 1/2?

• Yes to Josh Archibald for Game 1. For the simple reason that he can easily be connected to the above concept. He might not be a complete player, and he lacks experience, but he's got that speed, in addition to a belligerent drive to the net. Carter Rowney and others might be a better fit along the way, but not now.

• I know Matt Murray was held completely out of the two final regular-season games, and I know the fuss that's stirred. But I don't believe he's hurt. I believe that Sullivan wanted to make double-darned sure he made it through the weekend intact and refreshed. Backing up the starter offers no such assurance.

• There might not be a more passive penalty-killing system than the one John Tortorella preaches. The Blue Jackets back off, cut off shooting lanes, back off some more, then let Sergei Bobrovsky see the puck and make the save. Well, Bob's good, but he's not good enough to go east-west as violently as the Penguins' power play can, as we saw repeatedly in their meeting here a couple weeks back. And there's about as much chance of Tortorella adjusting their PK as there is of hockey's long pants making a comeback.

• Upset pick of the first round: Flames over Ducks. I can't convey strongly enough how effusively the Penguins' coaching staff spoke of the former when we were out in Calgary.

• Regular-season performance is all that's allowed to be considered for the NHL's voting awards, so here are my picks:

Hart Trophy: Connor McDavid, Oilers
Norris Trophy: Brent Burns, Sharks
Vezina Trophy: Bobrovsky
Calder Trophy: Auston Matthews, Maple Leafs
Jack Adams Award: Sullivan