We've been blessed with an embarrassment of hockey riches over three decades in Pittsburgh, to the point that, on this Saturday night at PPG Paints Arena when Sidney Crosby was No. 1 star, when Evgeni Malkin should have been No. 1 star, maybe the most memorable moment came from the resident third superstar.
Yeah, here I go yet again about Phil Kessel.
This goal wasn't exactly pivotal in the Penguins' 5-1 flattening of the Sabres, coming with 6:46 left in what had been a two-goal game. It also wasn't at all out of the ordinary, certainly not for a shooter of Kessel's caliber:
See, not much to it. Kessel gets a chip from Evgeni Malkin inside the Pittsburgh blue line, takes off, encounters some strikingly passive defense from Buffalo's Jake McCabe, doesn't bother skating a full stride beyond the top of the right circle, then just humiliates Chad Johnson with a short-side wrister.
Wholly unremarkable, at the risk of repeating myself.
Except for one thing, and it's the only reason for this small article: From the moment Kessel collected the puck with a clear sheet of ice in front of him, the crowd of 18,582 roared. Then roared a little louder. And each additional stride seemed to add an additional decibel until ... boom! That thing that we all expected to happen happened.
I'm neither naive nor parochial enough to believe for a second this is exclusively some Pittsburgh thing.
But you'd better believe it is a Pittsburgh thing:
That'll never be topped in my journalism career, as far as being in a place and experiencing the full scale of emotion. And that, of course, was Mario Lemieux's final home goal before his first retirement in 1997. If you hit that play button up there -- and I can't recommend it enough -- you'll hear the constant roar of the crowd for Lemieux after the "Simply the Best" video had played, appreciating what all concerned inside the Civic Arena thought was the last time they'd ever see him on skates. But once action resumes, when Ian Moran makes that beautiful backhand pass that even he couldn't believe he'd made, and once Lemieux is loose behind the Flyers' defense ... it's hard to describe how loud that roar was.
Everyone knew. I'm convinced of that to this day. Every single person in that building, possibly including poor Garth Snow in the Philadelphia net, knew he'd score.
So Lemieux skates in full stride, chin up, puck glued to his blade as it swung left and right, and he pretty much issued a command to part Snow's pads for the flick through the five-hole.
The sound after that ... just listen up there. Listen to it. You won't believe that the initial sound could be beaten, but it's actually blown away. The old steel dome might as well have come down on top of all of us.
The moment was shared. It wasn't just Mario's. It was that of everyone inside because, to feel it, the belief itself -- the overwhelming, universal belief -- could only have contributed.
Obviously, I'm not comparing. But there's a thing here. In the past 29 NHL seasons, the Penguins have had the Art Ross Trophy winner 15 times. With four different players: Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. And with an array of other players who came close. So when we see a player in that range go one-on-one with a goaltender, local fans reasonably have more cause than those of any other city to mount that crescendo until the puck goes where everyone knew it would go.
That's all I've got here. Nothing cosmic or terribly substantive.
Now, give a listen to the Kessel goal ...