Kris Letang was trapped deep in his defensive zone, with one opponent in his face and both visible passing options taken away.
But this, he'd confide with me much later, was fine.
"There's always a way out," as he'd put it, "even when there isn't."
No doubt. Because this, my friends, was the best version of Letang. The one Mike Sullivan had urged on the morning of Game 6 in San Jose, in the form of two terribly blunt words: 'Just defend.' And when that's been his mentality, from the moment his NHL career was born in Pittsburgh, he's been mostly superb.
So yeah, there was bound to be an escape. And there was.
"I just flipped it in the air, back out to center ice," Letang would explain. "Sometimes that's the play to make, especially when you're getting pressured."
Pretty boring stuff, right?
Definitely not worth a highlight, here or anywhere.
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And yet, that thought process was unquestionably the underpinning, from this perspective, for the Penguins' 7-0 slaughter of the Flyers in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs on this wonderful Wednesday night inside a roof-popping PPG Paints Arena.
TAP ABOVE FOR BOXSCORE, VIDEOBecause hey, look, in the spirit of brotherly love, let's just say that we hold these two truths about this series to be excruciatingly self-evident:
1. The Penguins have a ton of talent.
2. The Flyers have no goaltending.
And both of those had been equally evident well before Sidney Crosby's natural hat trick, before Evgeni Malkin skated circles around the commonwealth, before the playoff remix of Jake Guentzel put up four points, before Conor Sheary and Derick Brassard and Guentzel played tic-tac-toe, before Matt Murray's sprawling glove snag led to a 24-save shutout and — who didn't see this coming? — counterpart Brian Elliott coughing up five goals on 19 shots before hitting the hot water.
There's amazing material here:
For the home side, it was an exhilarating exhibition of skill, especially by Crosby and Malkin. But no Nostradamus was needed for that. As Sullivan would word it afterward, "There aren't too many guys who can make those types of plays."
This other stuff, though ...
Guentzel won't make anyone's Selke Trophy ballot, but on the above montage, he drops to one knee to block a Shayne Gostisbehere slap shot, maniacally races to track back on Michael Raffl, then teams up with Olli Maatta to double up big Wayne Simmonds right off the puck.
This all took place in one period, mind you, the second.
That's why Sullivan again praised Guentzel as "a 200-foot player," and why Guentzel himself ho-hummed being asked about the extra effort, saying, "I'm just excited to play in the playoffs. The building was obviously really going."
It was bedlam, actually:
Maybe that contributed to more of this ...
That's Gostisbehere getting another shot blocked in the same period, this time by Olli Maatta taking a bit of a risk in abandoning Raffl out front to drop to a knee, same as Guentzel did. If Maatta stays with his man, he'd never hear a peep from Sullivan or Jacques Martin, but he still goes for the bonus effort.
Get this insane stat: The Flyers registered 24 shots on goal. They also had 24 blocked.
"They got in lanes, made the plays," Dave Hakstol observed from behind the visitors' bench. "We’ve got to be better in getting shots through, but give them credit."
Will do, Coach.
Start with Chad Ruhwedel, captured by our Matt Sunday blocking a Simmonds shot for the photo atop this column, who led the way with six blocks. Which, you might recall, is as many as the team as a whole recorded in one recent game that had Sullivan seething and the broader public pining for Ian Cole, as if he were the only player in the league capable of doing this.
Anyone still remember when Ruhwedel was a two-month scratch?
Nope, me neither.
Sullivan spoke after that six-block fiasco that, "Blocking shots is a mindset," and this welcome display proves it concretely. Because all that was required, then and now, was becoming more invested. On this night, Justin Schultz had four blocks. Brian Dumoulin had three. Ten total players had at least one.
Funny how that works.
Know that Sullivan loved all of it, and I'll get to that in a moment, but first two other related facets ...
To repeat, Letang defends when he's at his best. But within that, he's at his very best when he's making reads like the one above.
The Flyers are attempting some ambitious stretch pass, with two forwards floating behind Letang. Doesn't matter. Because Letang sees that the defenseman, Radko Gudas, hardly known for his finesse, is being pressured by Riley Sheahan. Gudas has no chance of beating anyone with a pass. So Letang flies forward, collects it out of the air, keeps his skates moving on the counterattack and gets tripped by Sean Couturier to draw a power play.
"You just want to see the situation," Letang would tell me, "and find a way to turn it back the other way."
That's an enormous, if underappreciated, part of defending.
Here's one last one, but it's not the least important ...
Sheahan was one of the Penguins' top handful of performers, and that's saying something when Crosby and Malkin were dueling viral-video loops. He was all over the puck at both ends and on the penalty-kill, and he and fellow fourth-liners Zach Aston-Reese and Tom Kuhnhackl drew unsolicited praise from Sullivan: "When Riley plays between those two guys, that's a really solid line. We can trust them against anyone."
See who's up there?
Right. That's the Flyers' top line of Couturier, Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek. And if you appreciated the work of that unit on this night, then I'm afraid we no longer can be friends. Couturier and Giroux were each a minus-4, Voracek a minus-1, and they combined for all of four shots.
Not coincidentally, on the shift above, Sheahan's line churned away in the Philadelphia zone for nearly 40 seconds until, just as Sheahan was finally heading to the bench, he made one final backcheck to feed Letang for what eventually would become Bryan Rust's early icebreaker.
Do enough of that, and the other team's offensive potential doesn't matter a whit because they're not about to score from the far end of the rink.
Do enough of tracking back in general, and the other team will produce only 10 shots from its forwards in the entire game. And no, I'm not making that up. Fourteen of the Flyers' shots came from defensemen, which almost always come after a team's already set up.
Defense happens all over the rink at all times in all settings.
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Sullivan could hardly contain his glee at seeing that occur with a consistency unlike anything seen since ... well, Murray's previous two playoff shutouts. You know, against Nashville.
On the overall effort: "I think it was just a commitment to defend and play the right way. Philly's got a dynamic offense. They're a team that really comes at you with numbers. Their defensemen are very active, and they have some elite forwards who can make plays. When I look back on the 60-minute effort, I thought that was as good a commitment to playing defense as we've had."
Over the full season, he meant. He wasn't done.
On keeping Murray's crease almost completely clear: "These guys are hard to defend. They've got some big bodies that like to play in front of the net. If we can box them out to give our goalie sightlines, that's the priority. But it's not always that easy. I thought our defensemen did a good job of recognizing when to take that ice and make it hard for them. But I also think our forwards did a good job of getting in shot lanes and discouraging those pucks from getting to the net."
I'll offer an assist here: What Sullivan means is that no one has to clear anyone from the crease if the puck's not in the neighborhood. And that's a good thing since the Penguins' defensemen aren't exactly authoritative in that area.
Still more ...
On the turnovers and the tracking back: "What I liked a lot is that, when we did turn the puck over, I thought there was urgency and effort from guys away from the puck to try to get it back. To recover. To reload. To try to eliminate any numbers the Flyers might have had an opportunity to build up. That meant a lot."
All of it did. Arguably much more than the plays that did merit highlights, as Carl Hagelin and others in the room acknowledged:
Did you hear the man?
"It all started in our zone."
Seriously now, who saw any of this coming?
That couldn't have been known after a winter marked mostly by defensive inconsistency, if the Penguins could still defend when needed. Whether or not they could flip the switch, as I'd been describing it.
Well, consider the switch ... not so much flipped but maybe ripped right out of the wall.
For one game.
But consistency isn't earned over a Guentzel montage or a Sheahan shift or even over the most sizzling 60 minutes of hockey produced in these parts since last summer. The Flyers don't have anyone to stop pucks, and their young defense will only exacerbate that, but their offense is far better than this showed. They won't win this series, but they also won't just fade away without scoring a few goals.
"There are a lot of things they do that make it hard on you," Letang would say. "Everything you saw us do tonight, we have to keep doing it. Just like that."
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins vs. Flyers, PPG Paints Arena, April 11, 2018. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS