There hasn't been a fleeting moment since the calendar flipped that Evgeni Malkin hasn't been the NHL's premier player. His totals for 2018: 24 goals, 25 assists in 30 games.
And it's no coincidence that he and his Penguins took off with the sweetest of symmetry.
"We were fast," Jamie Oleksiak would tell me late Sunday night, his own speedy skates still laced up. "I mean, it's a fast team we've got there. And we really skated."
That's it. Begin story, end story.
It's a gorgeous game, hockey, but it isn't all that complex at the core. As Herb Brooks used to admonish his boys from behind the bench, "The legs feed the wolf!" And when anyone would swing around to ask what that meant, he'd explain that any wolf that couldn't keep up with its prey was going to wind up an awfully hungry wolf.
In that context, then, consider the Penguins' 3-1 throttling of the Stars at PPG Paints Arena as an excellent Exhibit A. Because they faced off with an opponent that most would rate as a bona fide Stanley Cup contender, and they forechecked and backchecked with equal fury, they picked up assignments without possession, they performed at a superhuman level on the power play and ... man, Oleksiak worded it just right: They really skated.
I asked Mike Sullivan about all that skating, and his response might have represented his most glowing praise yet for the 2017-18 edition of his team.
"From start to finish tonight, I thought, this was one of the more complete efforts that we've had. All year. On both sides of the puck. I thought every line contributed. We created high-quality scoring chances. I thought the power play was dynamic. And our play away from the puck was pretty good. We were stingy defensively."
With that, there was a slight shake of the head, as if to catch himself. He's not prone to this sort of thing.
And then ...
"That's the formula. That's the blueprint for us, moving forward. We can be every bit as good away from the puck as when we have the puck. And yeah, it's always predicated on our ability to use our foot-speed."
Blast-off occurred right from the drop of the puck, even though the Penguins were the tired team of the two, having chased around the speedy-themselves Maple Leafs and losing Saturday night in Toronto, while the Stars rested at their Downtown hotel here. Evgeni Malkin delivered two early -- and snarly -- checks, Kris Letang buzzed all over the rink, and Oleksiak did some slick backward skating to smoothly disconnect a Dallas three-on-one.
I asked Malkin, in essence, about eating his Wheaties:
That was just the start. By period's end, the Penguins were up, 2-0, in goals, 11-8 in shots, and all of it involved the feet moving, moving, moving.
This was the first goal, by Patric Hornqvist on the power play, in which Sidney Crosby dishes to the perpetually roving Malkin before the final feed:
"Great play by Geno," Hornqvist would tell me. "We had a lot of guys skating hard. We played a great game. But what Geno's doing right now ..."
No need to complete the thought. Malkin's everywhere right now, even when up a man. He's got a position on the power play only inasmuch as he lines up somewhere for the draw. Otherwise, it's whatever wherever. For both him and Phil Kessel, actually.
Watch him take a tour of Texas on this power play in the second:
There's speed, and then there's using speed. Some teams are more effective when they're static. Some players are that way, too. Not the Penguins and not most of their players.
Up front, Crosby had two assists and was flying all 200 feet. Phil was Phil. Conor Sheary and Jake Guentzel apparently were annoying enough to draw two dumb Dallas crosschecks. Riley Sheahan continued to look comfortable wherever Sullivan distributed him. So did newcomer Josh Jooris. And another recent arrival, Derick Brassard, who deserves everyone's patience after having been stuck in Ottawa's quagmire of a system under Guy Boucher, had his wheels working, too.
On the back line ... yeah, that was something else:
That's Tyler Seguin, the Stars' superb talent who picked the Penguins apart in the meeting last month in Dallas. And as I'd hoped in print, Sullivan and Jacques Martin made every effort to align the pairing of Letang and Brian Dumoulin against Hitchcock's best.
Above, Dumoulin, who's so much better a skater than his offensive figures would suggest, spins violently to suddenly go stride for stride with Seguin, matching up like an island-level cover corner in football to keep his receiver near the sideline chalk. Exasperated, Seguin, one of the NHL's elite and prolific shooters with 36 goals and 275 shots, simply turns to the inside and floats an awful pass that Letang intercepts casually before bolting back the other way.
Now, that's not a rush they'll show on Seguin's ultimate highlights package, and he wasn't the only one of Dallas' finest to get easily discouraged, as Ken Hitchcock had no trouble pointing out afterward ...
... but credit still goes to the defense and the skating involved.
As Hitch himself put it, "Their team checked us hard. They were on us hard. They pressured us. They used their speed to check us. They played a very good team game."
Funny. I was about to ask Hitchcock to elaborate on the speed thing, and he stormed off. Foul mood, I suppose. Hockey coaches at all levels hate when the other team is faster.
Anyway ...
... as illustrated above, speed can kill at both ends. Because it forces the opponent to invest energy and thought into defending plays they'd rather not defend.
That up there is Chad Ruhwedel crazily casting himself forward for a deflection, and yeah, that's five-on-five. This was in the second period with a two-goal lead, so it involved risk. Neither Ruhwedel nor his partner Olli Maatta, the passer, was around afterward for me to ask, but there's no way that's not a set play between the two.
The shot goes wide, but the pressure's applied by Ruhwedel's mobility. And the Stars have yet something else to weigh, even if just subconsciously.
Trust me, that's part of Sullivan's foundational mindset in pressing his defensemen to join the rush. It's not that he allows it. He demands it. One of his reasons for benching Ian Cole earlier in the season was that Cole wasn't doing enough of that. He takes it drop-dead seriously.
This was another in the third ...
... and there isn't much of an outcome. But Letang flying through the neutral zone, gaining the Dallas blue line -- without support, it's worth noting -- forces those Stars back again. And if they're forced back, they lose an edge. Or some mojo. Or momentum.
"I just think that's the identity of our team," Sullivan would continue in answering my question. "That's the competitive advantage that we think we have over other teams. So we feel we've got to utilize that as early and as often as we can, game in and game out. That's a pretty good hockey team we played against, a team that plays a heavy style and they can skate. We knew it was going to be a physical game. We knew they were going to try to use their aggression against us. I was really pleased with the focus I thought our guys had and just trying to get to our game."
Skating, of course.
"Skating's a big part of it."
