Kovacevic: On good guys, bad guys, gargantuan heads, gratitude

Nov 22, 2017 • 12:00 am

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It's Thanksgiving Eve, and I'm feeling grateful to get to know good people like Marcus Gilbert, the better with which to form a personal judgment for when they do something wrong.

If that comes across as corny, so be it.

It's absolutely wrong to use a performance-enhancing drug, regardless of purpose or intent. I believe Gilbert's statement that he took it accidentally, and I believe Ben Roethlisberger's description that strongly supports that, but one of the chief responsibilities of an elite athlete is caution over what you consume. That applies as far as having people around you who share that same level of responsibility.

This isn't optional. He needed to do better. He let down a championship-caliber team by not doing better.

But anyone branding this man in any broader sense -- dumb, cheater, whatever -- isn't among the many people who consider themselves lucky to know him. He's smart, he's unselfish, and he's good, good, good, all the way through. And when he comes back from the NFL suspension that his carelessness has cost him, be very sure he'll follow through on his stated commitment to being better than ever.

• I've known Starling Marte even longer, and I've always liked him, too. But what he did was genuinely dumb, selfish and all else. These situations aren't at all identical.

• Gilbert will miss the New England game. But that doesn't matter. Because nothing matters when the Steelers face the Patriots. The Patriots will win by a bazillion, the stock exchange will collapse, the plague will rise anew, North Korea will bomb Guam, hurricanes and earthquakes and locusts will sweep the planet, and the Pittsburgh Police will begin enforcing jaywalking Downtown.

All hope is lost. Repent ye Steelers fans while there's still time.

• I'll be really thankful for the long-awaited sarcasm font.

• Oh, wait, that was Bill Belichick, the genius himself, forecasting the end of days -- as ignorantly as humanly possible -- upon the Patriots' visit to Mexico City over the weekend.

• Evgeni Malkin's injury will keep him out of the Penguins' game tonight against the Canucks, though it couldn't possibly be serious if (1) he finished the game Saturday against the Blackhawks and (2) Mike Sullivan isn't ruling out using him this weekend.

What I hope is that the Penguins will be proactive in seizing any similar opportunity to keep one of their two superstars out of action over the course of the 82-game regular season.

We're light-years from seeing the NHL go the route of the NBA and Major League Baseball when it comes to resting players through the least meaningful part of their years. The culture just isn't there. No one's going to get through to a Malkin or Sidney Crosby the value of sitting in the press box for any given game, no matter when or where it occurs.

But that shouldn't keep the Penguins' management and coaching staff from recognizing it, especially in the extraordinary circumstance of working toward a third consecutive Stanley Cup championship.

• Josh Archibald should have logged a lot more than one game to this quarter-point in the schedule, but still, this game is a good one to use him, with the Canucks having played last night on the wrong end of the commonwealth. They'll arrive here every bit as exhausted as the Penguins were a couple weeks ago out in Vancouver. Archibald and Carter Rowney could add a vital edge there, as both bring a lot of what Sullivan feels the team is missing of late.

• The Penguins are 11-8-3, which isn't a great look for a defending champ. But for all the rightful fuss over the early schedule being so cramped, the facet that might have been overlooked is that they've faced some teams that are better than most thought they'd be: The Blues, who won the season opener here, are No. 1 in the NHL at 16-5-1. The Lightning, who routed them twice, were universally thought to be a contender, but their 15-3-2 record and league-best plus-28 goal differential has them on another level entirely. Even the Jets, who've made the playoffs once in five years since returning to Winnipeg, have followed up their 7-1 slaughter of the Penguins by improving to 12-5-3.

I'd mention the Blackhawks, too, except that they only seem to perform at their peak when playing the Penguins. But you get the point.

• I got an email from Joe Morgan yesterday morning. For those too young, he was a great second baseman for the Reds and grew into a national brand as a TV color commentator.

The email, of course, didn't just go to me. It went to every member of the Baseball Writers Association of America with a Hall of Fame vote, a group I joined two years ago. And the thrust was to emphasize what Morgan described as a representative feeling among former players to keep the steroid guys out.

The key passage from the email: "Players who failed drug tests, admitted using steroids, or were identified as users in Major League Baseball’s investigation into steroid abuse, known as the Mitchell Report, should not get in. Those are the three criteria that many of the players and I think are right. We hope the day never comes when known steroid users are voted into the Hall of Fame. They cheated. Steroid users don’t belong here."

The email was written in a respectful tone, and it was appreciated here. But it wasn't necessary. The guidelines given Hall voters haven't changed since the first class, including Honus Wagner, was selected in 1933, and those guidelines include a character clause. As long as that clause is there, I'll follow the rules and vote accordingly. If the clause is ever removed -- and Major League Baseball or the Hall could surely arrange that if they wanted -- I'll ignore character.

Simple as that. This isn't something I'll ever overthink.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that Barry Bonds will get my vote in Two Thousand and Bleeping Never. And if anyone seeks an explanation, beyond the glaringly obvious, I'll point to Bud Selig, the man entrusted to protect the best interests of baseball, refusing to attend Bonds' record-breaking home run in San Francisco, and then I'll ask Bud to explain why he took the stance that he did.

Can't pass this on to the writers, Mr. Commissioner. This was your mess.

• For me, Thanksgiving Eve, forever and ever, has meant a home hockey game in Pittsburgh. It's also meant one of the most boisterous crowds of the season, with so many expats back in town for the holiday, all extra-eager to cheer on their team and make up for all the times they can't. PPG Paints Arena will be a blast tonight.

It's a little thing, but it's one of countless little things that make this corner of the world 'someplace special,' as the old radio jingle used to go.

WHAT'S BREWING

• Holiday notice: All of our Daily Fun Thing and regular weekly features are taking the week off so that our staff can better enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday. We will, of course, cover all news as we normally would, including on Thanksgiving itself.

• Wonderful, original material from Katie Brown this morning atop our site on the influence of the Canucks' Sedin twins on the Penguins' two Swedes. Our collective aim is to bring you Penguins coverage in all forms, from strategy to personalities to opinion to hard news to all points in between.

• We'll be fanning out today, with Matt and Katie on the hockey, Dale Lolley and me over at Steelers. For those asking about Chris Bradford, he'll be formally joining us early next week, as he's fulfilling his commitment to the Beaver County Times until then.

MORNING JAVA

Christopher Carter and Lolley discuss the effect of Marcus Gilbert's suspension on the Steelers' offense, what to expect from the Packers and more football: