The Penguins' offseason to date -- and their offseason as a whole, from what I'm hearing -- can be condensed to three significant moves:
1. Sign Jack Johnson.
2. Bring back Matt Cullen.
3. Have the dog bring the slippers.
That third one's no joke, and it might actually be No. 1 in priority. Because it shouldn't be forgotten that the No. 1 thing that went wrong for the club in these past Stanley Cup playoffs was running out of gas.
I'm not saying this because truth-teller Evgeni Malkin blurted out after that Game 6 loss that he and his teammates were 'a little bit tired,' violating every basic tenet of the hockey culture in the process.
I'm not even saying this because of the heavy math involved: 307 total games in 943 days, from the 2015-16 season opener in Dallas to shaking hands with the Capitals on May 7. Which is positively insane. It's a full-on NHL game every 3.07 days -- including the offseason! -- and then add to that the high-octane level of all that extra hockey.
No, I'm saying this for the simple reason that they think it.
And they thought it.
Not just Malkin. All of them. I heard it from countless players, beginning with that awful October schedule right through to the end. Oh, they wouldn't bring it up. But they'd find a way to make it known, maintaining pride and never breaking the cultural stride.
Justin Schultz was especially adept at this art.
'How you feeling, Schultzie?'
'I'll let you know tomorrow.'
Ha! He never got around to that!
Remember what Jim Rutherford told me in our long talk five weeks ago?
“I think our whole team, all of us, will come back stronger for this," the GM spoke, right as we were closing up. "I think we’ll be more ready for another run. I really do.”
Good for him. Good for them, too.
Good for Sidney Crosby for venturing out to Wimbledon to work on a different sort of backhand, in addition to meeting some of the sport's luminaries:
"It's crazy how strong his lower body is"https://t.co/C0baejsZnc https://t.co/C0baejsZnc
— British Penguins (@BritPensFanClub) July 7, 2018
A little tour of #Wimbledon with Sidney Crosby ?? pic.twitter.com/l5vYazaTFl
— Maria Sharapova (@MariaSharapova) June 25, 2018
I asked Crosby at one point early last season how much time he'd legitimately taken away from hockey after Nashville, the parade and all that. His answer: "Three weeks, probably. Then I had to get back on the ice."
Good for Malkin for getting back home and crossing all the borders in visibly enjoying the World Cup there:
Alex Ovechkin's wild summer continues.https://t.co/ILgCc2yNxY
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) July 1, 2018
Doesn't look so tired up there, does he?
Best of all, good for Kris Letang and family:
Congratulations to the Letang family on the birth of their baby girl, Victoria! ? pic.twitter.com/ZClWu4gJXg
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) July 8, 2018
Anyone who doesn't think childbirth can take a toll on the collective, ask someone who knows.
This isn't the sexiest storyline of the summer, but I'll dare say it's the most significant. What this group achieved, with so many overlapping players on both championship rosters, was the NHL's first in 20 years for a reason. Because it was extraordinary in the truest sense of the term. Teams just don't do what they did in the salary cap era. The Kings couldn't do it. The Blackhawks couldn't do it. The Capitals won't do it. Because the process exacts an excruciating toll.
And still, consider how close they came to taking down the eventual champs, in a six-game series where a goal here or there -- or Braden Holtby not being superhuman -- could have swung fate violently the other way.
The moves themselves, again, weren't exciting. But I'm not of the mind that they needed to to be. All that was required was an upgrade at each position, and both those boxes were checked.
I look forward to hearing so, so many more stories like the above, once they all get back to Cranberry. Which, hey, is still a couple months away.
• No one will benefit in this regard more than Mike Sullivan. The man knows one speed and, as I'll occasionally fear, one strategy: Pedal to the metal ... unless there's trouble, in which case the pedal's pushed through the floor.
That served him well through the two Cups and for long spans of this past season. But it won't work forever, in particular the Xs and Os. Barry Trotz's picking apart of his pinching-defensemen scheme, which represented one of the few times another coach had outwitted Sullivan, will pop up copycats all over the league. Not everyone can pull off the wicked transition the Capitals used to counter, but they'll damned well try now that they've been handed the blueprint.
I'll find it fascinating through camp and the preseason to see how Sullivan adjusts.
I'll find it even more fascinating to see if he adjusts.
• The Penguins hyper-focusing on Johnson's breakout skills -- and he's terrific at this, even when at his otherwise worst -- is a 'Moneyball'-type approach that'll also be fun to monitor.
Way too many folks, even diehard baseball fans, seem to think 'Moneyball' was primarily about Billy Beane and the A's winning with a small payroll. That was part of it, but the main theme was exploiting market weaknesses, identifying strengths that Oakland found valuable that others didn't. Thus, when other teams caught on to the valuation of walks and on-base percentage, Beane and his staff soon changed gears to seek out other traits, then pursued those at lesser dollars.
I'm not suggesting Johnson's a bargain. At five years at a guaranteed $16.25 million, he's anything but, and I'll reserve my right to be deeply skeptical of this acquisition until proven otherwise.
But I'll also enjoy tracking Johnson's breakout success rate here, especially after Rutherford remarked earlier this month, "It's certainly going to help him with the forwards that he plays with. Go back to the two years we won the Cup, and we had a tremendous transition game. You have to have defensemen who can move the puck."
In the 2017-18 season, for all else that ailed Johnson, he ranked sixth among all NHL defensemen in completing a pass from the defensive zone to the neutral zone 73.5 percent of the time. The five ahead of him were the Hurricanes' Jaccob Slavin (76.0 percent), the Ducks' Cam Fowler (75.9), the Predators' P.K. Subban (75.1), the Lightning's Anton Stralman (74.5) and the Kings' Drew Doughty (74.4).
That's heady company.
Maybe that'll matter here more than in Columbus. I'm liking the Penguins' defense a lot when their forwards can catch the puck with a full head of steam.
• Know who else overcame a lot defensively because he made a golden breakout?
Sergei Gonchar.
• I'm all about Alexander Ovechkin, back in Russia, taking the Cup home to his dad, who wasn't able to make it to any of the Capitals' playoff games:
A moment every father and son dream to experience together.@ovi8 and his dad enjoy the @StanleyCup. pic.twitter.com/FiFdED8g7Z
— NHL (@NHL) July 9, 2018
• For all the fuss over the Lightning and Maple Leafs improving this offseason, I've got three other thoughts about the Eastern Conference:
1. Both New York teams will be abysmal, mired in rebuilds. Not sure if this has really sunk in yet, but my goodness, the Islanders lost John Tavares and responded by signing, uh, Valtteri Filppula, Leo Komarov and Tom Kuhnhackl.
2. The East's most improved team won't be Tampa or Toronto. It'll be the rising Panthers, who, I'll still insist, might have steamrolled people had they squeaked into the playoffs there at the end.
3. Anytime you're asked if any team in any sport has plunged as precipitously and ungraciously as your 2015-18 Pirates, tell them the ongoing tale of these sickly, sometimes sickening Senators. One goal away from the Final. Incredible.
• Speaking of the Pirates, don't presume that Ottawa's front office is motivated by anything other than money in trying to move Erik Karlsson and, by extension, Bobby Ryan's onerous contract. As a result, don't presume Karlsson will wind up in Tampa. The Golden Knights have nearly $20 million in cap room, and George McPhee's too smart not to figure out how to get his guy.
• Was anyone else uncomfortable with the Tavares circus?
Had too much of an NBA-style, meet-me-in-South-Beach, showtime feel for me. Here's hoping that all the other leagues can always find a way to avoid the super-team concept, as well as all the reality-show hype that leads to their formation:
• If hockey were decided by shootouts, as happens in World Cup soccer, I'd only take issue with it if the shooter were placed between the hash marks and the goaltender were required to keep his skates on the goal line. Because that would be all about luck and it would be silly to watch, never mind deciding the planet's most important sporting event.
• I asked to do No. 16 today in our staff's Who Wore It Best run. Not a coincidence. Hope you've enjoyed the series as much as we have.