WASHINGTON -- Evgeni Malkin curled along the right half-wall, collected the puck on his forehand, pushed it softly to the point, then dug in hard with the left skate to shove back in the other direction.
After which he smiled, ever so slightly.
This was moments after the Penguins' top power-play unit opened its first work of practice Saturday afternoon at Capital One Arena, and the smile was pretty much all I could reasonably cull toward predicting whether or not his injured left leg will allow him to return Sunday for Game 2 of this Stanley Cup playoff series with the Capitals.
I mean, if compelled to predict based on what I witnessed, I'd say yes. He skated just fine. But he also skated just fine for two full periods in the very game he was hurt.
If compelled to read minds or between the lines, I'd still say yes. Although he looked a little put off after a brief post-practice conversation on the ice with Mike Sullivan and the coaching staff, as captured by staff photographer Matt Sunday ...
... he'd also come across as completely cool minutes later in the locker room. And this isn't exactly a man gifted at guile.
“I feel so much better,” Malkin would say to the cameras and microphones. “We’ll see how I feel tonight, overnight. I can’t say right now, but I feel better.”
He and I briefly chatted afterward. Nothing about hockey or health. Just life. Seemed to be in ideal spirits.
Whatever. We'll all know at some point between now and 3:20 p.m.
Ask me, and what matters most is the threat he poses. That the whole power play poses, even without him.
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The one area all concerned had agreed would prove pivotal in this series was how both the Penguins and Capitals would fare with the extra man. The Penguins pumped five power-play goals past the Flyers on 27 chances, this after leading the NHL with an outrageous 26.2 percent success rate in the regular season. The Capitals ranked seventh in the regular season at 22.6 percent, then buried the Blue Jackets in the first round by beating Sergei Bobrovsky nine times on 27 chances.
But hey, Game 1 apparently never got that memo. Because there were only three total power plays, two for the Penguins to one for the Capitals, and neither side scored.
Was it that referees Dan O'Halloran and Brad Meier lost their whistles?
Nope, not from what I was told in the Penguins' room. Both officials kept warning all participants for three hours that the regular-season standard for rules, particularly as related to stick fouls, would remain the standard.
So was it that maybe no one wanted get stuck in the box, grind their knuckles for a couple minutes, then make that long, ugly slog across the ice to the bench after costing his team a goal?
"Don't be that guy," Bryan Rust was telling me. He's one of the PK mainstays, of course. "Don't ever be that guy."
Turning a bit more serious, he added, "We have confidence in our guys, but it's just better to not take penalties in the first place."
"We've seen in the past that the power play can be the difference in a series," Brian Dumoulin told me. "We know we can kill off one or two a game, but when you start getting into four or five ... that's when it gets difficult. It starts taxing guys, especially against that kind of power play."
The kind with Alexander Ovechkin. And others.
"You've got to be constantly aware of him, but also Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov, T.J. Oshie, John Carlson ... all their guys. That takes a mental toll, too. There's a lot going on out there."
Sullivan knows it, and it's why he's spoken about discipline with every other sentence since this series was set. After the post-practice stretch, he gathered all his players around him for the standard closing words, and from afar I picked out 'discipline' at least twice.
It's been received:
"We did a good job of staying disciplined in Game 1. That was the key," Conor Sheary told me after that. "It's the best thing we can do."
That much is indisputable. But I also wondered about that balance an NHL player has to find in such a scenario. On one hand, the broader mindset is one of warp speed and wild aggressiveness, as Sullivan himself preaches. On the other, there's a restraining order.
Sheary's stance: The line isn't that blurred.
"If you're out there and being physical, maybe checking somebody or even roughing ... that's not something we're going to be mad about," he said. "If it's tripping or slashing, the stick fouls, the things you can avoid, that's different."
Also, if a player keeps his feet moving, he's less likely to hook or hold an opponent because he's already keeping up.
"Right. That, too. And I thought we did a really good job of that in Game 1. We'll need to do that again in Game 2."
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Here's what's funny: The Capitals were saying all the same stuff Saturday.
"If they're not going to call anything, you can play tougher, play harder," John Carlson, their top defenseman, told reporters after practice in neighboring Arlington, Va. "And if they're calling a lot of penalties, you'd better be careful. ... I mean, I don't think we crawl into a hole and let them shove it down our throats. I think we have done that in the past, where we sit back and let them control the game. But I don't think that was one of those."
Eh. Not so sure about that. Carlson's got a point when weighing that his team would finish that fateful third period with an 18-8 edge in shots. But, at least from this vantage point, the Penguins' three goals in 4:49 early in the period sure seemed accompanied by an unhealthy passivity from the Capitals:
"Five-on-five, we were very comfortable out there, and it was a disciplined game for both teams," Lars Eller, Washington's third-line center, said. "I think you'll probably see something similar in Game 2. Both teams want to stay out of the box."
"It's about discipline," old friend Brooks Orpik said. "I can't speak for them, but I'm assuming their approach is the same as ours."
It is. But the benefits of both teams taking that approach almost certainly, I think, favor one above the other.
Remember, in the previous two playoff meetings between the Capitals and their arch-nemesis — don't ever call them rivals, because a rivalry takes two — the Washington approach was to bludgeon the Penguins mercilessly and relentlessly. I've covered a ton of hockey in my career, and I can't recall anything like it other than, at the risk of mixing sports, the way the Steelers and Ravens went at it from a decade ago. With one exception: The Penguins really didn't hit back.
Nothing impresses me more about those two championship runs than having survived those series physically.
Well, the Capitals' approach has changed, but their personnel haven't. Not extensively, anyway. Karl Alzner, a physical defenseman, is gone, but he was banged up for the 2017 series, anyway. Marcus Johansson is gone, but he's never been a bruiser. Same with Justin Williams, another offseason loss last summer.
So these guys, the ones still here, can still bring it. In Game 1, actually, they banged their way to a 44-24 edge in official hits.
But if they're being leashed in by Barry Trotz in this regard and it's the right thing to do and they can't consistently skate with the Penguins ... then what are we saying?
Something in this equation will change, Malkin's return notwithstanding.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
