"I'm at a loss. Honestly."
That was Olli Maatta. And the most amazing aspect of that assessment was that it didn't follow an actual loss.
The Penguins were absolutely abysmal.
They were held without a shot for 37 minutes, nine seconds, including a full period of hockey for the first time in the 50-year franchise history, regular season or playoffs.
They gave up the opening goal, rescued only by a review that showed the opponent entering the zone offside by a millimeter.
They had spaghetti legs from the start.
They had an early five-on-three for two full minutes and, for most of that, moved the puck as if it were a manhole cover.
They abandoned the primary focus of their strategy.
They blew a three-goal lead.
They were on the bad end of inconsistent-beyond-the-norm officiating.
And ... um, they won?
Oh, right. They won Game 1 of the freaking Stanley Cup Final:
That was Jake Guentzel's rising wrister from atop the right dot with 3:17 left, the one that broke the tie, brought a 5-3 victory Monday night at PPG Paints Arena and represented the shot that snapped that absurd shot drought. The kid burst from center circle, backed off Nashville defenseman Ryan Ellis, overpowered Pekka Rinne's glove and, with a flick of the wand, undid all the damage beforehand.
Which was, in isolation, wonderful in every way.
"To see him break through with that, to get that one opportunity and put it in, was pretty special," Conor Sheary was saying. "We just needed one play, and that's what we got from Jake."
The Penguins' shot total for the game wound up at a dozen, if you can believe that, lowest for any participant in the Final, winner or loser, since Lord Stanley donated his silverware in 1893.
I'm not sure I believe it.
But in all candor, I'm also not sure of the value in excessively analyzing this. And, infinitely more important, it sure sounded afterward like Mike Sullivan held a similar stance.
"We weren't very good," he began the first reply of his press conference. "You know, we weren't very good."
Somehow, he kept going.
"When you're playing a team like Nashville that has a balanced attack, you've got to have some pushback. I don't think in the second period we had any pushback. You know, we had a discussion in between periods about staying on our toes, about playing the game the right way, making sure we don't try to sit on the lead, that we try to get the next goal. This team usually is pretty good at making sure we're continuing to play the game the right way. Tonight wasn't the case."
He took a bit of a breath.
"We just weren't very good."
That's a natural weren't-very-good hat trick, if anyone's scoring at home.
Of course, anyone anywhere in Allegheny County could have scored on Rinne on this night, including from their home. He'd won one of his eight career meetings with the Penguins, he'd owned an .880 save percentage, and he managed to dig that hole deeper in conceding four goals on 11 shots, including these to go up, 3-0, in the first:
They weren't all his fault, as Peter Laviolette took pains to point out, but the only significant save Rinne made all night was saving the Penguins from further embarrassment.
Otherwise ... where to start with what happened to them?
Were they fatigued from having three days' rest to the Predators' five?
