Rule No. 1 of following the Penguins: Mike Sullivan and Jim Rutherford are never wrong.
Rule No. 2: If they ever are wrong, they actually aren't. It just takes a little while for all of us to see the light.
OK, we're on the same page there?
Good, because it would be a gross oversimplification of this weird gaggle of these first three games, in particular this 4-0 pounding of the Predators on this Saturday night at PPG Paints Arena, to presume that everything's just swell now. It isn't. It probably isn't close. It was nothing more than the first victory, the first real show of competence after coughing up 15 goals in the first two.
That said ...
"We were better," as Jake Guentzel would tell me afterward. "We were a lot better."
They sure as heck were. And somewhere there's a frothy brew to be raised for pulling off maybe the most violent game-to-game U-turn in franchise history, swinging from the 10-1 debacle in Chicago to body-slamming the team that: a) swept those Blackhawks out of the playoffs this past spring; and b) made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, as you might recall.
Credit the players. But above all, credit Sullivan for the cool, calm approach he'd basically advertised to us all after that Friday video meeting in Cranberry.
"We were ready to play," Olli Maatta said. "Sully and the coaches made sure of that."
The guy's touch is beyond belief:
• Sullivan had stressed, above all, smarter puck management with an emphasis on getting shots and bodies to the net. Just as he's done every time the Penguins have found bumps in his tenure.
Well, what do you know?
• Sullivan had stressed, as a close second, the need for more sacrifice, more 'physicality,' because, as he reminded the players relentlessly the past 48 hours, "This game is hard."
Well, here's some serious sacrifice, meaning Ian Cole putting his mouth in front of a Roman Josi slap shot as maybe only Cole would:
If anyone was going to lead the way in sacrifice, it would be Cole. He lost some teeth, spit out some blood, and there might be some other loose parts. More will be known in the next couple days, but Sullivan labeled him "out indefinitely" until that occurs.
Matt Murray, the beneficiary there, expressed some rather robust respect for Cole when I brought him up:
The 'physicality' was there, too, although, as Sullivan reiterated afterward, "That doesn't mean bone-crushing checks with this group." Because that's not at all who, oh, about 99 percent of them are.
But, unlike the first two games, there were actual 50/50 battles, actual jam plays in traffic and even this actual hip check -- a rarity anywhere in modern hockey -- by Kris Letang on Colton Sissons in the second period:
Upon completion, Sissons charged to the Pittsburgh crease, Letang chased him stride for stride, the two stared at each other for a second once the whistle blew, and Letang simply skated away.
• Sullivan might have mishandled Murray by leaving him in to roast for a half-dozen goals in Chicago, and I'll admit doubting that decision. It wasn't exactly Patrick Roy vs. Mario Tremblay, but neither did it seem prudent with a two-time champion embarking on his first full season without the Marc-Andre Fleury parachute.
Nope. Wrong again.
Murray was savagely sharp from Nashville's opening shot to the 26th, and all points in between, in particular this partial-break pad stuff on one of the Predators' most skilled forwards, Pontus Aberg, halfway through the first:
Look at Murray's skates emerge from the crease before the butterfly drop. That's an aggressive, confident goaltender.
That's what Sullivan knew he'd get, if only because that's what Sullivan's always gotten from his guy in times of trouble.
• Oh, and Ryan Reaves. Yeah, he played, too.
And he ran for mayor, all in the same night:
That's really real. Dana Heinze, the Penguins' equipment manager, told me he reached out to the Steelers for an authentic helmet -- it's currently got 18 on the front but it'll eventually have a 17 on the front and 18 on the back to signify the season -- for the players to pass around to their top performer after a win.
The deliberation on this one likely took a millisecond:
All I feel comfortable adding to this list of achievements -- one sweet deflection goal, two decisive fight victories, three blown kisses toward the Nashville bench and 18,645 citizens eating out of his hand by evening's end -- is that Sullivan and Rutherford were right. And this one I do feel comfortable extrapolating beyond a single night.
Because I don't think I've ever -- I mean ever -- heard this group of players just gush about the impact that one player had on the collective.
“You feel bigger, stronger out there," Guentzel said. "When you know that guy’s on your side, it makes a difference for you. He’ll take care of business.”
And it wasn't just the players. It was alumni, one of whom told me, "It's beautiful to see that, beautiful that our guys have someone like that on their side." And it was more than one member of the front office, one of whom on the hockey side told me, "Did you see how he changed the game? Everything Nashville wanted to do ... it all went sideways."
I wasn't positive what that last one meant, so I pushed in bringing up Scott Hartnell's hilariously meek reaction to Reaves after Hartnell, cheap as ever, tried to flip Sidney Crosby's lid with a high stick in the third period.
"Hartnell wanted nothing to do with him. He wanted to get tossed."
And so he did, both Reaves and Hartnell getting tossed with 10-minute misconducts.
Which, of course, didn't stop Reaves from emerging from the tunnel to take his No. 1 star bow in a T-shirt and sneakers.
Rutherford paid a steep price, parting with Oskar Sundqvist and a first-round draft pick, neither of which the Penguins could casually afford to lose. But he followed through on that, in part because he, Sullivan, and even the men over them -- Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle -- had gotten sick of seeing their stars savaged nightly in Gary Bettman's NHL. And when Bettman publicly accused Rutherford of being disingenuous when complaining about that treatment before the Final -- 'gamesmanship,' Bettman called it -- management was irked that much more.
It wasn't easy. The Blues weren't shopping Reaves and openly stated, before and afterward, they had no wish to trade him. So Rutherford did as he's always done and raised his bet. And once the deal was done, J.R. said this: “When you want to get the guy who's the best at doing what he does, then you have to pay a price. Regardless of what we paid, we’re very happy to have him.”
Who's disputing that now?
There'll be renewed debate about fighting and all that in the days to come, whether it's an effective deterrent, whether it's worth carrying a fourth-line forward who might be less skilled. But that debate's been going on for decades, and the only other element that's been as consistent is that the league's been run by rank amateurs, which explains why they've been able to coexist.
All that matters right now, at least from this perspective, is that Sullivan and Rutherford think it's a good idea.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
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• Event: Game vs. Jaguars
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