We're about a month away from the Penguins opening training camp in Cranberry and getting our first real glimpse of what they've got.
Maybe we'll hear that, too, along the glass.
No, this won't be some paleozoic, Brian Burke-type plea for more punch to the lineup. It's not just fighting that's gone. It's hitting, shoving, face-washing ... pretty much anything that's physical enough to carry a skater so much as a half-stride out of his way from prioritizing possession.
I get it. I embraced it long ago. Goals were up in the NHL in 2017-18 to 5.94 per game, up .4 from the previous season for the biggest increase of the salary cap era. Given that Gary Bettman's still the commissioner, that's an astonishing achievement, and I'll split credit for that between the league's smart enforcement of slashing guidelines and coaches' emphasis on possession, speed and so forth.
It's a fast man's game. All else are getting left behind. Show me the top five teams in the league in hits last year, and I'll show you five teams that didn't win a single playoff game: Canadiens, Oilers, Kings, Coyotes, Senators. Heck, the team that had been the biggest and baddest, the Jets, didn't start succeeding until they cut out a lot of their own extracurriculars.
And again, that's fine.
But that doesn't mean the local club couldn't benefit from a bit more pushback.
In an interview session with Jim Rutherford I covered a couple months ago, just before NHL free agency, he had a somewhat surprisingly firm reply when asked if the Penguins might seek additional size after watching the bigger, more punishing Capitals win the Stanley Cup: “No. We played in a series with Washington three years in a row. We came out ahead two of the years. They came out ahead this year. The two years that we won could have gone the other way, and I can say the same for the one where they beat us. If we had a few breaks. And we had a handful of players who weren’t playing to the top of their ability against Washington. But even then, we hit the post in overtime. If that goes in, we go back to Washington for Game 7, and you never know. I don’t think it happened because they were bigger and stronger."
All of that's accurate. But then, in short order, Rutherford went about doing the following:
• Signed Jack Johnson, who, for all his many flaws, has ranked among the NHL's hit leaders over the past decade with 1,101. He loves the action, especially when assigned to pound on a single opponent. (Ask one of his best buds, his new captain.)
• Dumped the contracts of Conor Sheary and Matt Hunwick to the Sabres, moving their forward most likely to be knocked off his skates, and a miserable mistake of a signing in a mobile defenseman whose idea of mobility was a headless-chicken approach to defensive zone coverage.
• Kept 6-7, 255-pound Jamie Oleksiak as a restricted free agent through a seriously dedicated three-year, $6.4 million extension.
• Surprisingly signed a seventh center to his NHL depth chart in Derek Grant, a 12-goal guy for the Ducks last season who stands 6-3, 215.
• Brought back Matt Cullen. And don't dare laugh at this one. Because while Cullen's 41, he'll get his fingernails filthy, and he's still got one of the most, um, active sticks in the game. He's long been able to carve up his own space on the ice.
And that's really what I like most about this, even if, after all of this, Rutherford still downplayed that getting more physical was ever part of his plan. I like the idea of carving up that space.
Swinging back to the Penguins' 2008 and 2009 Stanley Cup finalists, I'd like to think they achieved that as well as any team in franchise history. They had a ton of young, top-shelf talent, obviously, but they didn't start clearing a path for the kid versions of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and all the rest until augmenting with players who also had talent but also came with enough size and snarl. You know, Gary Roberts, Bill Guerin, Mike Rupp, etc., all in that broader time period.
That's not to suggest the two most recent championship teams weren't tough. I'm on the record, right from Nashville, that the 2017 Penguins out-gritted all their predecessors. But that was different. That toughness was rooted in perseverance, in pushing through injuries, in eating pucks, in an intangible will that no setback was too big.
Now, after watching the most recent edition get slugged around a little too often -- not just Tom Wilson, either, but that example still stings in the worst way -- I'd welcome seeing Mike Sullivan's Penguins go a little less Gandhi, a little more General Eisenhower: Be smart, but be the aggressor.
Both really are possible, even in this era.
What if, for example, Sullivan and Jacques Martin paired Johnson and Oleksiak?
The biggest plus is that they'd keep the top four intact: Kris Letang with Brian Dumoulin, Justin Schultz with Olli Maatta. But the potential is for a third pairing that shows a dramatically different style. Let's not forget that Oleksiak's best hockey in Pittsburgh, by far, came on a pairing with Ian Cole. Both those men spoke at the time of how they worked off each other's physical play, how they knew the first to the puck-carrier would finish his check, how they'd need to support accordingly.
Imagine that as a change of pace for opposing forwards.
What if Grant were given a real chance to crack the roster out of camp, even if that means -- as it almost surely will -- sliding to the left side?
Look, he's 28, and he'd never come close to looking like a 12-goal guy in his professional career before last season. There's no telling what kind of cliff he might find. But there's no harm in finding out, whether that means penalty-killing duty or just offering additional scoring from the fourth line while also being, you know, bigger than most people.
And hey, while on the subject, what if Zach Aston-Reese rediscovers that riveting form from those 10 games before getting hurt as a rookie?
This young man, all by himself, might contribute more toward this cause than everything else I've mentioned. I'm not sure even diehard hockey fans have fully grasped how strong, how tough ZAR is, how much he'll have his way on the ice throughout his career. He's a stockier, sturdier, albeit less skilled, Patric Hornqvist, and that's not exactly faint praise.
Most important by far, though, what if all of the above factors collectively create space for the players who matter the most?
I'm thinking Jake Guentzel in particular. There's no reason not to think the kid's genuinely special. Not after 23 goals in 37 playoff games. Not after he's demonstrated his own brand of toughness in digging toward Sullivan's 'hard areas.' The only times he's been held back, it's because he's either stopped going to the net -- never a problem for long -- or because someone on the other side has obliterated him because of his stature.
Get him space to operate. Crosby, Malkin, Letang, Phil Kessel, even Hornqvist could use some complementary carving, too. They're all on the wrong side of 30 now.
No one needs to drop the gloves. No one needs another Ryan Reaves. But neither does anyone need to wait to find out if this franchise, of all franchises, wouldn't love to offer its stars a little more room to score.