Bradford's Five Thoughts: Wasn't Crosby finished?

The Penguins have been winning plenty of games lately, two in a row and seven of the last nine, to be exact. But they've never won, well, quite like this. They didn't just beat the Minnesota Wild on Thursday night, they pantsed them.

Their 6-3 win matched a season-high for goals and the three-goal margin of victory probably should have been six, but that's another story for later. Still, it was the kind of convincing victory you'd expect to see from a two-time defending Stanley Cup champion, but it's one we haven't seen nearly enough from them this season.

Up and down the lineup, all four lines and three pairs, from rookies to superstars, the Penguins got meaningful contributions from everyone on Thursday. It was perhaps the Penguins' most complete team effort.

Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel, the cogs in what should be the NHL's most explosive offense, recorded three points each. Rookie Dominik Simon potted a pair of goals and is looking like the rookie winger that everyone thought Daniel Sprong would be.

And don't discount the fact that the Penguins are -- at long last -- getting some puck luck. Want to talk about puck luck? Malkin scored a pair of power play goals on two shots, the only shots they had on the man advantage, and they both went in ... off the skates of Ryan Suter.

The first at 9:09 of the second period:

The other at 1:42 of the third.

Add all that up and it equals 57 points, good enough for second place in the Metropolitan Division going into the All-Star break. After all the Penguins have gone though this season, they'll gladly take it.

"It's nice to get rewarded," Crosby said. "We know it takes a lot of hard work and paying attention to details, but it's great to get those kinds of results when you do that. So, these are important points. We have to continue to play the same way here after the break."

1. Rumor of Crosby’s demise may have been greatly exaggerated.

Don’t look now, but the Captain is now ninth in the Art Ross race, trailing the Lightning’s Nikita Kucherov by just eight points. And Crosby isn’t even the leading scorer on his team. That would be Kessel, who moved into third place with his three assists.

Of course, this should come as no shock with Crosby. But his slow start, in which he went 11 games without a goal in early November, did raise more than a few red flags. Not anymore.

With his three assists against the Wild, Crosby extended his points streak to nine. Over that span he has 19 points, giving him 55 on the season. Mind you, two of these helpers weren’t run-of-the-mill secondary assists. Like this one to set up Brian Dumoulin's second-period layup:

The problem for Crosby will be trying to keep up a point-per-game pace over the final 31 games if he's to get back to his career average of 83.2 points per season. It's clearly doable for him, but will be difficult down the stretch run when defenses figure to tighten up.

He now has 1,082 points in his Hall of Fame career, surpassing Jaromir Jagr for second all-time in franchise history. Now if only he could score a goal. Crosby’s “stuck” at 399 after going a fifth straight game without a goal. Oh, well.

2. Sometimes silence can speak volumes. 

In Ian Cole's case it did. Win, lose or shootout loss, Cole religiously makes himself available to the media after every game -- at least every game he plays in, which hasn't been often lately.

But not this one.

Cole made an unexpected return to the lineup after being a healthy scratch the previous seven games. But as it turns out, Cole was only in after Mike Sullivan revealed after the game that Matt Hunwick was out with an upper body injury. Hunwick, the Penguins' biggest free agent fetch last summer (three years and $6.75 million), is day-to-day.

Give Cole credit, he made the most of his opportunity in what could be his last/best chance to showcase his skills to any potential trade partner. Cole played 18:01 and recorded a team-best 72.73 Corsi For rating in all situations. Moreover, Cole showed he can bring a little offense. Two of his pinches led to goals, including this one which led to Simon's first-period goal:

"Certainly we thought Colesy had a really strong game," Sullivan said. 

That's actually nine more words than Cole said. After the game, the most talkative Penguin was nowhere to be seen. Is he, um, ticked off? Maybe. It would be hard to blame him.

Cole should be in the lineup. Bottom line. Period.

3. I have no idea what goaltender interference is. 

None. And, apparently, neither does the NHL. The question of what is goaltender interference has become to the NHL what the definition of a catch is in the NFL.

The Penguins caught a potentially massive break midway through the second period when Jonas Brodin's power play goal was overturned after Toronto concluded that Mikko Koivu interfered with Casey DeSmith. Koivu, with Cole's stick between his skates and facing the shot, bumps into DeSmith's stick. Guess he didn't "survive the ground?" Here, I'll let you decide:

But I can tell you what Rick Kehoe, the former Penguins star and current Rangers scout was thinking. "That's soft," he was telling me during an interview for another story.

It's certainly not like Kehoe's days or even five years ago. Not sure the NHL is better for it.

That wasn't the only dubious call of the game, though.

Poor Dom Simon is taking himself out of the Lady Byng running on obscure penalties. On Tuesday he was feeling shame for a faceoff violation and Thursday he was sitting two minutes for closing his hand on the puck:

What makes this really strange is that it was the second -- second! -- time that a closing the hand on the puck penalty was called against the Penguins in the second period. Patric Hornqvist did it four minutes earlier.

Not sure if the Elias Sports Bureau keeps track of such things, but that's got to be a record.

4. When he wasn't getting (not) interfered with, DeSmith had another strong game.  

Who knows when it'll be the goalie's next game? DeSmith made 23 saves to win his third game and second in a row. After four starts, this could be his last NHL start for a while.

DeSmith wasn't spectacular but didn't need to be against the Wild, who inexplicably came out flat in a game which they needed two points.

“We got killed,” said Wild coach Bruce Boudreau, who has routinely been killed by the Penguins. “We got outplayed in every facet of the game.”

That's not the Penguins' problem -- their problem is finding a way to get work for DeSmith, who has been a revelation since being recalled a week ago, and Tristan Jarry, who was reassigned to Wilkes-Barre to get in some games over the weekend.

Matt Murray, who served as the backup on Thursday, is expected to return to his No. 1 spot after the break. But DeSmith has certainly given the organization something to think about. He is 3-2 with a sterling 2.08 goals-against average and .927 save percentage.

Those numbers would be even better had he not been victimized for three garbage time goals in the third period when his teammates clearly took their foot off the proverbial pedal. But if there was a positive, Sullivan said that he appreciated his team's pushback over the final nine minutes.

"I thought we settled back into the game after that flurry occurred, which was the more important takeaway," Sullivan said. "There was no panic. It's just 'OK, lets get back to playing the game the right way.'"

Here's what DeSmith said:

Obviously, DeSmith would prefer to stay in Pittsburgh but: "That's not my decision to make. Obviously this is the NHL and I love being here. I hope I'm back up here on the other side of the break, but you never know." 

The guess is that DeSmith will go down, but you could flip a coin between him and Jarry.

5. Where has this Carl Hagelin been?

We can argue the merits of Jean-Sebastien Dea playing four minutes a night -- OK, a season-high 7:36 on Thursday -- or scratching Ryan Reaves (again) or Jake Guentzel at center, but everyone should agree on the second line.

While the are many moving parts among Sullivan's line combinations, one has been fairly consistent. The trio of Malkin, Hornqvist and Hagelin has been outstanding and were again against the Wild. They combined for 14 shot attempts, three points at even strength and dominated possession. Each had a Corsi For percentage over 65.

Routinely paired with the big Russian and a fellow Swede, Hagelin has resurrected his season -- if not career - in recent weeks. He has eight points in his last eight games, including two goals. He scored his fourth of the season at 9:28 of the second period on a pretty passing play between Malkin and Kessel:

Say what you want about his contract, but Hagelin never cheats effort. It's always good to see that get rewarded.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY