Justin Schultz is congratulated on his opening-minute goal Tuesday night. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

Penguins

Kovacevic: Does anything ever bug Schultz? Apparently not

Nov 8, 2017 • 2:00 am

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We heard again and again how Justin Schultz isn't a No. 1 defenseman, all through the Penguins' recent Stanley Cup run. How no team since the 2006 Hurricanes had won it all without a true No. 1. How there was no way that this group would do it, either, without Kris Letang.

We heard it right up until June 11, of course, when No. 4 was No. 1 in every way.

And now?

"Oh, man, that's not something that should even come up," Matt Murray was telling me after the Penguins' 3-1 throttling of the Coyotes on this Tuesday night homecoming at PPG Paints Arena. "That guy ..."

Murray turned his head toward Schultz's stall, which was being swarmed by cameras and microphones.

"That guy over there is the most underrated player in the NHL. I really believe that. I don't think there's anywhere near enough appreciation for what he's become. And you know what? He's only getting better. He gets better all the time."

Seems like a fair assessment all-around, actually, given the context. See, a hockey player never really escapes the labels applied to him after playing for a Canadian team. I've noticed that forever, and I'm anything but alone.

If Phil Kessel, for example, has an oil-and-water relationship with Toronto reporters, that narrative gets embedded from coast to coast north of the border, mostly because of the preponderance of hockey media in the country's largest city. And sure enough, even after winning two more championships in the past two years than any Canadian franchise has won since 1993, he remains relentlessly painted as this dour, lazy troublemaker, as opposed to being ... you know, the real Phil that Pittsburghers have rightly come to love.

My goodness, if I had a loonie or toonie for every time I was asked by reporters on this recent trip through Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia how terrible Kessel was in real life, I could start my own Royal Canadian Mint. The perception just won't die.

It won't die regarding Schultz, either. Because, you know, he had a minus-78 rating over four seasons for the Oilers. Never mind that Edmonton was the league's very worst team over that span. Never mind that everything from his instruction to his ice time were bungled beyond belief. Never mind that he didn't even make this past five-game trip with the Penguins. His name still came up in the Edmonton broadcasts and public prints, almost always in vain.

So here he is now, wearer of two rings, bearer of a plus-36 rating for anyone still paying attention to hockey's least significant stat, and a complete player across the board.

Assuming any more proof might be needed, consider that, in his return Tuesday from a six-game concussion absence, this following just one team practice the previous day in Cranberry, he logged 20:31 of quality hockey -- three shots, a block, a hit -- and began with this bad-angle whip past Antti Raanta 59 seconds following faceoff:

"Lucky goal," Schultz called it.

"The kind of goal you never want to give up as a goalie," Raanta called it.

It was both, really, but on Schultz's behalf, there was still the presence of mind to aggressively join the rush -- as he explained, "I saw that we had other guys back, so it felt safe going up there"-- then to snap off a shot that Raanta couldn't have been expecting once Kessel dished back to Evgeni Malkin trailing, or once Jake Guentzel had set up on the opposite lip.

Later in the same period, Schultz's return really was underway, as is almost always the case in concussion comebacks, with his getting a little jarred by the Coyotes' Tobias Rieder:

It's maybe the most hockey thing ever, but Schultz legitimately seemed to embrace the contact:

And with that would come more reminders of all that the Penguins miss when he's out, but first, and plenty pertinent, Mike Sullivan was outstanding when asked after the game to assess Schultz's value.

He opened his response by stressing that Letang's load gets easier. In this game, Letang dropped to 23:38 from the near-half-hour he was piling up in Western Canada.

"It allows us to spread the minutes a little bit," Sullivan said. "Tanger played 23, 24 minutes as opposed to 28, 29, 30 minutes. That’s a big difference. I think it gives Tanger an opportunity to recover more completely before he’s going back on the ice."

Of Schultz's own impact, Sullivan added, "He scores a goal for us tonight, but he helps us in so many other ways. He passes the puck extremely well. He sees the ice so well. He goes tape-to-tape a lot. He’s a threat off the offensive blue line. We like how he’s defending. He’s not an overly physical guy, but he’s a good skater, he’s got a good stick and he’s tenacious."

Now, keep all that in mind as we take a three-stop tour of Schultz's top traits, all from the second period.

Below, Schultz is faced with an authoritative-looking Arizona rush:

Old friend Alex Goligoski has the puck. But as soon as Schultz sees that longtime partner Ian Cole blocks off Goligoski, he smartly aligns with the other man, Derek Stepan. And the moment the puck squirts through near Stepan, Schultz just rubs him right out of the play, flashing impressive upper-body strength. Cole follows behind Schultz's seal and clears up the boards.

Below, Schultz is getting a puck on net:

I know, big whoop. Nothing special. Except, of course, when he does that in Game 6 in Nashville and Patric Hornqvist soon banks it behind Pekka Rinne. As well as all the other times that Schultz combines his mobility with his chin-up scans of the ice to find the clearest path more often than not.

It's a big part of Schultz's game, and it's maybe the primary reason he's been able to force his way into splitting time on the first power play with Letang, something that only recently was unthinkable.

The one below is my favorite on the night:

Schultz collects the puck coolly in front of Murray's net. It's a power play, so he knows he won't get pressured. But he's still got a couple problems:

1. Rieder's circling back out of the Pittsburgh zone, determined to take away at least one passing option.

2. Rieder does that by tailing Conor Sheary.

3. The second power-play unit just hopped over the boards, so Schultz needs to get off, which means he can't carry.

His reaction is to raise his head, almost exaggeratedly, to look up the right side. He wants very much to feed Bryan Rust bursting up the left side, partly because the options to the right are minimal, partly because, again, he needs to get off. So, by looking to his right, he pulls Rieder to the middle and even sways the broader Arizona penalty-kill that way.

"I saw it," Murray would tell me. "It was beautiful."

But it isn't done until he blisters one of those tape-to-tape specials onto Rust's stick with enough force that its receipt brought enough smack to be heard through the building.

"The pass is still the key," Schultz would say through that trademark gap-toothed grin after I brought this up. "The other part's fun, but you've still got to get the puck through and make sure other guy can't get it."

Rieder spins to try, but he's too late. And Schultz just casually coasts right over to the bench.

It couldn't be more obvious, at least to anyone not carrying terribly outdated preconceived notions, that Schultz has, at age 27, moved into No. 1 territory. Maybe not in Pittsburgh when Letang's at his best. Maybe not on a handful of other teams. But here's betting he'd hold precisely that status on a majority of teams around the league, particularly with how the game's now built on defensive mobility and production.

I asked Schultz after this game, maybe for the first time, if the No. 1 stuff ever bugs him.

"It really doesn't. Honestly," came the reply. "Ever since I've come here, I felt like I had a fresh start. I don't worry really about anything, let alone old criticisms. I just go out and play my game, play my hardest and try to help this team win."

Good times, right?

"The best."

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY

Penguins vs Coyotes, PPG Paints Arena, Nov. 7, 2017. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

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