NHL coaches obsess over obtaining every possible point.
NHL coaches seldom instruct anyone on how to play three-on-three.
If those two statements come across as incongruous, so be it. But let their combination underscore, powerfully, how little control anyone can have over so much speed, so much skill, spread out over so much ice.
"There just isn't much you can do," Kris Letang was telling me after the Penguins finally put down the Flames, 4-3, on Justin Schultz's goal 2:36 into overtime Monday night at PPG Paints Arena. "If you try to script it too much and something goes wrong ... you've got no chance. So it's better to just let everyone play."
Especially, of course, if that everyone includes the odd generational talent or two or three.
TAP ABOVE FOR BOXSCORE, STANDINGS, VIDEOBecause when Sidney Crosby buries one in overtime 48 hours earlier against the Islanders, and he and Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel each has two such goals for the season, and the Penguins as a whole are the NHL's most prolific team in overtime ...
... never mind being a cumulative 11-4 in all games that extend beyond regulation, including their 2-2 record in shootouts, and that 10 of those combined OT/shootout wins have come at home to set a franchise record ... then yeah, there's something special at hand.
And in this particular winter, nothing, no one in these parts has been more special than Kessel, who now has two goals and four assists in overtime this bleeping season. That's the most in the NHL and another franchise record.
"He makes it go," Schultz told me. "He revs it up."
Kessel does that literally. You know what I'm referencing, that tactic where he deliberately drags the puck back to the neutral zone like he's T.J. Oshie lining up to take down the Russians in Sochi. Sometimes he'll hold just one hand on his stick, as if to illustrate how casually he's handling the puck and the situation. I laugh out loud every time.
Well, this time, Kessel revved it up 200 feet away ...
He emerges from behind Tristan Jarry's net and, again casually, sends a soft billiards pass off the left boards to Malkin, who'd already been parked by the Calgary blue line. The Flames' Mikael Backlund, who'd been in on the forecheck, abandons that with Kessel's stride.
No, really. Watch up there for No. 11. That's Backlund. He turns and bolts backward like he'd just heard his house was on fire. The same reaction follows from Michael Frolik at center red. He's No. 67. Remember those names and where they were.
Now, the puck gets to Malkin, and the magic follows ...
... because he makes the clean reception and, upon being confronted by Mark Giordano, the Flames' best defenseman, he backhands a pass to himself -- look carefully because that's precisely what that is -- with an ease that would suggest it's common. It isn't.
Oh, and he's No. 71, by the way.
He also happens to be a bona fide fan of the Steelers, which might explain that aerial pass he then threw -- chest-high, right in the theoretical numbers -- to Kessel running the go route down the right side. And Kessel, who was wearing No. 81 rather than the more apropos No. 84 for the moment, caught the pass with his right hand -- careful not to close it and risk a minor -- and batted it down to his blade.
That's not planned. That's not practice. That's trust.
Anyway, remember Backlund and Frolik from the neutral zone?
They're about to show why they're both forwards by trade.
Backlund had dutifully followed Schultz all the way through Schultz's initial foray deep into the Calgary zone. But watch how they part ways at the left edge of this video:
Right. Schultz peeled back to the left circle to set up for a potential pass because "I just wanted to get open for Phil," and Backlund, for some insane reason, drifted behind the Calgary net. Which rendered Backlund as moot to this process as if he were seated in the first row with nachos.
Frolik, meanwhile, might as well have been munching on his own nachos in getting momentarily mesmerized by Malkin's stickhandling, realizing far too late that Kessel had never stopped churning up ice behind him:
Kessel makes his reception, feigns an imminent wrister by beginning the trademark planting of his right skate, draws both Frolik and Jon Gillies heavily toward his direction. And Backlund ... hey, there he is! Emerging from exile to screen his goaltender!
Which means that Schultz, who'd already made the semi-daring decision to go deep even though Malkin had barely gained the blue line, probably deserves a little more credit than what he'll get for this:
Still, I just had to ask Schultz what it was like to be standing at the beach and waiting to shoot into the ocean. And, as ever, he displayed a fine sense of humor:
Maybe I shouldn't be rough on the Flames. Because, as both head coaches on this night would openly attest afterward, it's not just that there isn't a protocol for three-on-three. There's barely even any practice dedicated to it.
That's why Mike Sullivan steers miles clear of claiming any credit for the Penguins' prodigious three-on-three success.
"With the skill level that we have, we should have the ability to win more than we lose," he'd say. "I think sometimes the coaching staff gets a little nervous because we tend to turn it into an all-offense type of game. But you know, there's not a whole lot of structure you can offer when there are only three guys on the ice. It really turns into a lot of instinctive play."
Funny, but Calgary counterpart Glen Gulutzan, Sullivan's former fellow assistant in Vancouver and still a good friend, used nearly identical terminology when I asked about it:
"Pond hockey," the man called it.
It's crazy, right?
I mean, even shootouts are practiced because of the extra point that can result. Not three-on-three. And not because coaches don't value it but because they know it wouldn't do any good. They send their slickest, speediest guys over the boards and basically hold their breath.
As Sullivan further worded it, "We've tried to discuss certain strategies that we think can help us be effective. But for the most part, it's really just about great players making great plays."
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY