MONTREAL -- "It wasn't a great shot."
Carl Hagelin's always in a rush, and in this case late Thursday night inside the Bell Centre, he was bound for the team bus. Everyone with the Penguins had spent a little extra time savoring their 5-3 bounceback beating of the Canadiens, but now it was time to go.
And yet, even as we'd finished speaking and he'd burst away, he turned back to share the above observation.
I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly, so I asked him to repeat it.
"It wasn't a great shot by me. At all. Really," Hagelin clarified. "I didn't get much on it."
With that, he whisked away, unable to hear what would have been a healthy rebuttal on my part.
It was a great play, the one that set up Patric Hornqvist's decisive deflection with 7:36 left in regulation.
It was a great all-around shift, as Evgeni Malkin would confirm for me by adding, "Yeah, so great."
And maybe most important in the aftermath of the never-speak-of-that-thing-again New York debacle less than 24 hours earlier, and then in the more immediate aftermath of Montreal storming to a 2-0 lead in the opening 6:31, it was a great all-around effort that genuinely deserved this goal as its signature.
Shots: 39-20, Pittsburgh
Shot attempts: 66-48, Pittsburgh
Territorial edge: Roughly the north-south span of Quebec province
Mike Sullivan, who called a meeting at the team hotel earlier in the day to discuss the debacle, sounded plenty pleased.
"There was a lot of hockey left to be played," he said, referring to the early deficit. "I thought our guys settled into the game, and I thought we did a lot of good things out there. We controlled territory. We created scoring chances. Our power play gets a big goal for us. We just stayed with it."
Translation from the non-French: This wasn't New York. And to echo the man, the effort was complete.
Still, not all things are created equal, and the Hagelin-Malkin-Hornqvist line has been a notch above the rest for a month now, with no signs of slowing. And not just Malkin, though he's been the best player in the world since the calendar flipped and, on this night, reached 40 goals for the third time in his career. It's been the other two, as well.
Right, Coach?
They're all that and much more.
"My linemates, they support me so much, give me passes," Malkin would say as only he can. "But they make their own great plays, too."
This was Hagelin and Hornqvist making a double-beeline for the Montreal net to tie, 2-2, late in the first ...
... and that's trademark stuff from both, up to and including one Montreal defenseman, Jeff Petry, grossly overthinking Hornqvist's approach, and the other, Paul Byron, taken for a ride by Hagelin only to have the pass skip off his skate behind Antti Niemi.
But the work on the winner merits some serious breakdown-style appreciation, so buckle up.
Rewind to the breakout, since this was a monstrous issue in New York:
Beautiful, right?
Kris Letang, always waiting to the last second, lures two Canadiens, then outlets to Malkin, who one-touches -- blindly, mind you -- to Hagelin, who springs Hornqvist in ... what, 2.4 total seconds?
"There's only so much you can do against a team with that much talent," Montreal's Brendan Gallagher would observe. "I mean, if you make one mistake against them -- doesn't matter where on the ice -- they're capable of spending the next two minutes in your zone."
This wouldn't take two minutes, but the attack would be sustained and surprisingly systematic.
Hornqvist concludes the above breakout with a backhand flip deep into the Montreal zone, one that allows Hagelin to maintain warp speed and, thus, beat the Canadiens to the puck at the end boards:
Malkin gets in there and does digging of his own, and Hornqvist engages, too.
This isn't the systematic part. That's coming. This is just pursuing the puck and supporting the linemates. All that matters is regaining possession after the initial zone entry, which Hornqvist does eventually before passing out to the left point for Brian Dumoulin.
This is where it gets fascinating:
Dumoulin goes D-to-D with Letang, who again waits to the last second to whip it right back. And when Dumoulin's shot gets blocked ... wait, what's Hagelin doing way out there above the hash marks?
Turns out plenty, but let's finish the goal first:
Hagelin grabs the puck, whirls around and flings it toward the net, where Hornqvist impressively contorts to lower his blade and redirect the shot way up and over Niemi's shoulder.
If the breakout was beautiful, this was outright gorgeous.
Another angle:
The game brought Hornqvist's 21st and 22nd goals, and this one brought his 400th career point.
"That's nice," he offered of the milestone with a small smile. "Hopefully more to come, but yeah, I'm proud of that. Typical Hornqvist goal, too, so I'll remember it."
But about Hagelin drifting back there ...
Did you catch that?
"When I see Haggy high like that," he said, "both D just leave for the flanker shots."
No, I didn't fully grasp that, either, and Hornqvist's conversational approach to Xs and Os tends to be to dismiss everything but the effort involved.
So I went to Hagelin, and he assisted on this, too.
"We talk about this situation a lot," he'd begin his explanation. "If I get the puck up high like that, the D have to move out a little. They know I can shoot from there. And because of that, Horny's going to be either left alone or have one D-man on him. And I'll take those chances any day of the week."
A big, big grin followed.
"Sometimes you'll see five or six bodies down there. But if I'm up top, and maybe Geno goes to the side -- like he did -- that's Horny against one guy. We'll take that."
Hockey is awesome.