Kovacevic: These Penguins fast, furious when fired up

PHILADELPHIA -- Conor Sheary lifted his chin, leveraged the puck, revved up his skates and began ripping up the ice. He had linemates flanking him to either side, puck support from behind, and at least a little open real estate, but this clearly was going to be a solo flight.

Nonstop, too.

"I felt like it was important," he'd later explain to me. "A guy like me, especially in an elimination game, I've got to bring the energy. I've got to create turnovers. I've got to put pressure on the D. And that means I've got to use my speed to my advantage."

Boy, did he ever:

Not much came of that sequence. The Flyers' Robert Hagg stripped the puck, and Jori Lehtera cleared. Nor was there a hard result for either of these two Sheary rushes a few minutes later:

Nor, for that matter, would Sheary wind up prominent on the scoresheet following the Penguins' 8-5 elimination of the Flyers from the Stanley Cup playoffs Sunday: Three shots, two blocks, one hit, zero points.

Next to Jake Guentzel showing up on that sheet with four freaking goals in a row ...

"Yeah, uh, I wouldn't say that compares," Sheary would joke when I brought up the day's blaring headline. "That was special."

No doubt. Guentzel's growing into a playoff beast before our eyes. As Mike Sullivan would beam, "He's got it."

And yet, at least from this perspective high above Wells Fargo Center, this goofy game, this goofy series and pretty much this whole goofy season can be better symbolized collectively by the combined speed/ferocity with which Sheary, Guentzel and so many others attacked the Flyers.

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Combining speed and ferocity?

It might sound silly on the surface, but it shouldn't. This was about Sidney Crosby, Bryan Rust, Phil Kessel, Riley Sheahan and Derick Brassard coming fast. It was Patric Hornqvist, Kris Letang and Olli Maatta coming furiously. Others were involved, as well. Even amid the game's other chaos, even having lost Evgeni Malkin and then Carl Hagelin, two of their best in these regards, the cumulative effect was beautiful.

Look at those three rushes above again. This time focus on the orange and black on the backtrack.

That's what I'm talking about.

That's the foundation of what Sullivan calls "Pittsburgh Penguins hockey." He admonishes his players when they're passive or "stagnant," a word he'll spit out rather than speak. He urges them to play "on their toes," to operate with "an aggressive mindset."

That's how this team ramps up when it's fired up and focused. It's in the feet. It's how their speed and skill allows them to create plays across the entire rink.

Oh, and that's what he found most satisfying about this particular performance, and I'm sure of this because I asked:

I'm equally sure of this: Should these Penguins somehow capture that third consecutive championship, it's bound to be the most imperfect path of the three.

Bank on it.

Because, again, we don't know what we'll get from one goofy scenario to the next. They might not bother showing up for the first period. They might decide that defending and backchecking are beneath them. They might choose to shoot only as a last resort, even when encountering maybe the NHL's wobbliest goaltending. Heck, they might have wobbly goaltending of their own, as they did Sunday with Matt Murray nearly getting yanked. And remember, when he gets pulled now, that'll be a career minor-league journeyman replacing him, not a franchise icon.

These are oddly turbulent times for the Penguins, and not just because it can't be known how much time Malkin or Hagelin will miss. It's just that kind of team. They can pump seven or eight by an opponent, or they can concede the same, and neither is cause for the slightest surprise.

But it's also this kind of team ...

That's Crosby cleaning Valtteri Filppula in the right circle. Brian Dumoulin connects right away with Letang — they're lined up on opposite points precisely for such a situation — and Letang shoots. The Flyers blow this two ways — a 44-ounce rebound by Michal Neuvirth, then Filppula failing to follow the opposing center off a lost draw — but everything happens so quickly those can almost be forgiven.

Same here:

Sheahan and Kessel whirl below the goal line with so much east-west motion that Hagelin gets left all alone. Also lousy by the Flyers, but also happening at a blur.

This was the game's most pivotal goal, I felt, the one by Hornqvist that cut Philadelphia's lead to 4-3 in the second:

Maatta gets it going with a smart read at the blue line to preserve the puck for Crosby, who promptly pushes down low and, after Guentzel drops a running back-style shoulder juke on Neuvirth, he serves up Hornqvist's basketball-style jam.

Boom, boom, boom in ... what, 1.4 seconds?

Wait, this one required even less time:

That's Guentzel's go-ahead goal 30 seconds into the third. Kessel pounces on Ivan Provorov with his standard big-game passion, and Provorov — who'd barely been healthy enough to play and was excused by his teammates for that reason — made a blatant mistake under any circumstance. The rest was academic.

And it doesn't get much quicker than the same guy scoring twice in 10 ticks:

Amazing stuff. Historic stuff, actually:

Did the pressure created by Sheary and others lead to all that?

If you ask me, it absolutely did. Every period. Every game. The whole series. Eventually, Philadelphia's young defensemen, the NHL's highest-scoring in the regular season, grew weary of every sequence being backward, backward, backward.

But hey, don't ask me. Ask them.

"They were making us work the full 200 feet," Andrew MacDonald, one of those defensemen, would say. "There was a lot of pressure."

"Everything they did was really fast," Claude Giroux would say. "It never stopped."

"They just keep coming at you," Wayne Simmonds essentially echoed.

The view from behind the Flyers' bench was the same.

"If you make mistakes, if you give them the puck back too easily," Dave Hakstol observed, "they can make you pay quickly."

Imagine either the Capitals or Blue Jackets talking like that in a week or so.

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Speed never slumps. That's an adage that crosses all sporting boundaries. An athlete can struggle for a spell at shooting a puck or throwing, catching, kicking or dribbling a ball. But barring injury or some tortoise-hare issues, an athlete who's fast will be fast unconditionally. A healthy Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky takes the race 9 of 10 times.

The 2016 Stanley Cup champions had it all, including that vital freshness that brought enormous shot and possession advantages.

The 2017 champions had it all defensively, including spectacularly deep goaltending, and made the most of a six-man defensive corps determined to compensate for Letang's absence.

These guys ... they've still got world-class skill, pedigree and leadership. And for reasons we might never figure out, they're also flawed in a way the first two weren't.

Maybe they can zip through these next few weeks quickly enough that no one will mind.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY