"Ha!"
So I've learned that Derick Brassard's got a loud laugh.
Louder, even, than whatever cacophony might have been coming from his mouth in maniacally celebrating his first goal with the Penguins, that sweet tying strike toward taking down the Islanders, 3-2, in overtime Saturday night at PPG Paints Arena.
It came with 8:31 remaining in regulation, it came before his resulting fall to the ice had been completed, and it was captured by our photographer, Matt Sunday, at ice level:
Oh, and check out the goal itself:
Yeah, anyone would be wired over that. Never mind that he finally got to feel like a full contributor to his new team. Never mind that his new team really needed to find a way to overcome this particular opponent following a three-game losing streak and fresh off that eight-goal debacle in Boston.
Forget it all. Just embrace the style points.
Because in these parts, style points count.
"I'm in Pittsburgh now," Brassard would tell me afterward with a broad smile. "I know."
You would think so.
I'd just invested the better part of three hours fixed on No. 19, hoping to study how he was assimilating. Some of that would be the search for chemistry with Phil Kessel and now, newly-added Dominik Simon. But the real focus was on adjusting to Mike Sullivan's skate-skate-skate system, this being a dramatic departure from the Senators, where, as can be recalled from the Eastern Conference final, Guy Boucher has his boys basically skating backward.
Suffice it to say it's been a struggle.
That up there is a faceoff. Brassard eventually gets beaten by Brock Nelson. The Islanders gain possession. No big deal.
But watch Brassard. Well, watch him quickly because he'll soon exit stage right. He approaches Johnny Boychuk, turns his skates, stops, then peels back as if he'd heard Boucher doing some scary voice in his head.
Which brings us back to the aforementioned big laugh. I'd decided to torment Brassard by revisiting a couple such sequences and, in this case, I didn't need to go any further than the word 'faceoff.'
After the laugh, he'd interject, "I know, right? I just started going back."
Back and slow. He did a lot of that through the evening. He'd retreat meekly, and he'd approach tentatively.
That up there is Brassard early in the third gaining the New York zone with a tiptoe, and Kessel doing so with authority. That's the 2017-18 Phil, by the way, where he revs it up between the blue lines and erupts onto the scene, just as he did in beautifully setting up Patric Hornqvist's icebreaker in the second.
But Brassard's a superb skater, as well. He shouldn't be eating anyone's vapor trails. He was lined up against a turnstile of a defenseman, Thomas Hickey, and could have run right at him like a rabid animal. Instead, he turned his shoulder, then dished toward Kessel way too early.
The rush died a deserved death.
"Phil really likes to hit the line hard," Brassard would explain. "I'm learning that. I'm learning a lot about him and now about Dom. I saw some things tonight from Phil -- like how he likes to wait behind the net for a pass -- that I'm going to remember."
It's a 180-degree swing. "It isn't easy," as he'd attest:
Thing is, he remembers what it was like to play this way, too. It's only been three years since he was with the Rangers, "where they played a style a lot like here." It was just a couple winters ago that he rang up a career-high 27 goals under Alain Vigneault. with a system -- and roster -- built on speed. He loved it, he told me, adding, "It really fit the way I feel I've played my whole life."
A couple years back, he experienced an emotional return to Ottawa, as Canada's capital is right across the river from his hometown of Hull, Quebec. And he experienced that much more emotion upon reaching the Eastern final until Chris Kunitz ended that. But his goal total plunged to 14 in the first season under Boucher, and this season everything plunged as the Senators fell apart. He didn't love it, certainly not the style, adding, "Any kind of hockey is fun when you're winning, but ... "
No need to complete the thought.
So here's Brassard now, with a shot at the best of both worlds. He can do that winning and he can fly around the rink aggressively.
Only he can say if this was coincidence, but this was his next rush with Kessel following his goal:
Backing off Boychuk at the blue line there ... a little more authoritative, right?
Coincidence?
"I felt better, for sure, after scoring," Brassard replied. "I'll get used to this. I just need to skate. I need to play my game."
Imagine the next one.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY