NEWARK, N.J. -- "I still believe in my team."
That's how Evgeni Malkin ended his answer to my question, even though I'd asked nothing of the kind. Which probably was as telling as it was compelling.
This was the whole exchange, minutes after the Penguins again fell short of the Devils, 4-2, Tuesday night at Prudential Center:
See, a simple question about some forwards pressing too much, and it came back as some overarching statement of faith in the current roster.
And he wasn't done.
"We lost, but we didn't play bad," Malkin continued. "We played hard. For me, this is like, huge. I mean, you see Phil fight?"
Oh, we did. Phil Kessel for-real dropped the gloves in the second period with New Jersey center Brett Seney. OK, so Seney's 5 feet 9, 155 pounds in soaking wet socks. And yeah, the referees curiously assessed Kessel a four-minute minor rather than a fighting major, robbing him of a Gordie Howe hat trick since he'd eventually log the requisite goal and assist.
But still ...
"You never see before, right?"
No, most probably hadn't. The Penguins themselves leaped to their feet on the bench in delight even though the Devils had appeared to have scored a goal at the far end on the same sequence.
And what did Malkin think of the fight?
"It's not fight. They gave him four minutes," Malkin came back to that question, even in this mega-serious mood unable to resist poking Kessel. "But it's huge for us. He wants to win every battle. He scored a goal. He tried to fight, like, he's not scared of anybody. He's a great leader of this group."
Then there was a bit of a pause.
"We understand we're a great team. We need to be shoulder-to-shoulder with each other. We're together. It's a tough time right now. But if we're together, we win."
The Penguins made mistakes. One huge one in particular in basically gift-wrapping a breakaway to Taylor Hall, the NHL's reigning MVP, for the winning goal with 11:53 left in a tie game. A couple others in glaring defensive lapses. A few, too, in bypassing chances to put the puck on net in favor of corner-picking.
But Malkin's broader point stands: They tried. This wasn't quite the complete, consistent effort of the 4-0 shutout of the Coyotes a couple nights earlier that snapped a five-game losing streak. But neither was it Toronto. Nor, for that matter, the previous meeting with New Jersey.
Trying isn't nearly enough, though. This can't be about culling valuable lessons anymore. The Penguins are now 7-6-3 and two points removed from the NHL's Eastern Conference basement. Which, by the way, is occupied by these Devils, who've won only two of their past eight games, both against the same opponent.
That, as Mike Sullivan stressed, needs to change first and foremost.
"It's frustrating because we're trying to find wins right now, and we can't seem to find them with any level of consistency," he said. "I thought we had spurts in the game where we were good. But then, for me, some of the goals that they scored, we didn't force them to work hard enough for them. And that, for me, is discouraging."
He wasn't pleased. Neither was Malkin, incidentally. The latter seldom speaks with the media after losses and, when he does, it's almost always with a purpose. This occasion, as described above, definitely came with a purpose.
The sense I get from all concerned is that there's a very real worry this roster gets ripped up, maybe even soon. That originates, obviously, from Jim Rutherford's jarring criticism a week ago, accompanied by his promises of action if things don't improve "over the next few games."
I wrote this then, and I'll write it again: These guys don't want that. They're more than teammates in many cases. They're friends. In the specific case of Malkin and Kessel, they're very good friends. And even those at lower levels of the depth chart would rather hang around and be part of a potential Stanley Cup contender than wind up who-knows-where.
Probably the sharpest perspective on what had occurred came, unsurprisingly, from Sidney Crosby after yet again being one of his team's top performers with two outstanding assists. He pointed to this game's unusual, dramatic shifts, from the Penguins dominating possession to the Devils deflating them with a single sequence.
"There are always momentum swings," Crosby would say. "It's a matter of managing that. We had chances in the game, we don't put it in, there's not much happening, and then there's a big mistake, it's in our net, and we're back on our heels. It's hard to really gauge these kinds of things when you're losing because everything's magnified. But I think when we're on our toes, there's no doubt we're a better team."
Meaning better than what they've been of late.
Was the captain's last line there similar to Malkin's statement regarding the roster?
Was he pulling for patience from those above?
Maybe. I thought about that as soon as he spoke it. But here's betting the only statements that count in the coming days will be made in the standings.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THREE STARS
My curtain calls go to …
1. Taylor Hall
Devils left winger
Two goals, two assists, a plus-4 rating and six shots for the player who won the Hart Trophy last season -- he had my vote, too -- on the strength of being such a huge part of his team's offense.
2. Travis Zajac
Devils center
Forced into first-line duty by an injury to Nico Hischier, Zajac beat Crosby to the net to score 28 seconds after the opening faceoff, and it was his saucer that sprung Hall for the decisive breakaway.
3. Phil Kessel
Penguins left winger
It'll always be a Gordie in my book, with the power-play finish ...
... the deft chip to spring Crosby on Jake Guentzel's goal and, of course, the scrap:
THE INJURIES
• Derick Brassard, forward, missed his eighth straight game with a lower-body injury. He's been skating on his own since Friday but didn't join the team on the trip here. Sullivan had no update on his status Tuesday morning.
• Justin Schultz, defenseman, is expected to miss another three months after fracturing his leg Oct. 13 in Montreal.
THE GOOD
I'm as much a proponent of statistical analysis, both ancient and advanced, as anyone. But I'll be damned if the numbers in this specific case tell the story of how strong Jack Johnson was in this game, by far his best since his arrival.
To start, he was a minus-2, stuck on the ice for New Jersey's first two goals despite having been the only responsible adult in both scenarios. And his Corsi For, which tracks teams' shots for/against while a player is on the ice, was a negligible 13 for, 19 against, or a CF% of 40.63.
Forget it all, just this once. Because, in addition to being easily absolved of the two goals, he also broke up three two-on-ones -- all occurring on Kris Letang pinches -- with one of those delivered with such authority that he smothered New Jersey's Stefan Noesen completely out of the action before turning play the other way. He registered three official hits, two of those seismic and one of those sending Miles Wood back to the Devils' bench hunched over in pain. He also skated, created and all the other stuff for which he's long been known.
"I'm feeling stronger, more comfortable, for sure," Johnson told me. "A little more every game."
That's a massive plus.
THE BAD
The defensive lapses were the ugliest and costliest, but the Penguins' most annoying shortcoming might have been that, out of their 55 total attempted shots, 14 were blocked and 10 were flat-out misses.
More annoying, three of those misses came on good chances by forwards who can ill afford to be trying pick corners or ping off the pipes:
In order, those were Carl Hagelin in the first period, Riley Sheahan in the second, Dominik Simon late in the third. Hagelin was cruising right down Broad Street and found nothing but end boards. Sheahan skated in on a partial break and tried to go all Sergei Fedorov on us. And Simon's doesn't count as an official missed shot because he tried to swat the puck from behind the goal line off Kinkaid and ... let's just say the only guy out there who should have been trying something like that was skating to his right. The puck exited the zone at a time when that wasn't exactly affordable.
I asked Sullivan if maybe his secondary forwards shouldn't start simplifying their shots:
THE PLAY
Hall's got superlative talent and even greater speed. He never should have been ignored as he was on the winner. That's the subject of my Hertz Drive to the Net.
THE CALL
Guentzel's goal at 4:04 of the third tied it up at 2-2, but only after a lengthy and not at all routine review to determine whether Crosby had interfered with Kinkaid.
He actually did, his legs kicking into the goaltender's pads and spinning him around:
But the initial call on the ice of a goal was allowed to stand because, as referee Graham Skilliter announced to the crowd, the interference came because "the actions of a defensive player" had instigated that. Meaning Crosby had been pushed from behind by the Devils' Blake Coleman.
It ended up the correct call, though it easily could have gone either way without much fuss.
THE OTHER SIDE
The Devils entered this one fresh off a flight from Winnipeg and a 1-6 trip in which they were outscored, 33-12, and took an especially physical abusing from the Jets. To boot, their locker room in the morning was a morgue. Players were either hiding from the cameras and microphones or mumbling when they emerged.
No matter. Their opponent of choice was in town.
The only victory on that 1-6 trip came, of course, in Pittsburgh, and it was a 5-1 laugher. If that result is removed from the trip, they were outscored, 32-7, by everyone else. Oh, and they're now 5-0-1 in their past six meetings with the Penguins overall.
Not that they were focused on that afterward.
“It's not just a win, but an effort we can be proud of,” Hall said. “It’s not an effort where we solely relied on our goaltender to steal a game. We did a good job of eliminating chances against a high-powered team.”
It was. And their next solid night just might come on the 19th of February, if I had to guess.
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins have a practice scheduled for today at noon in Cranberry. Chris Bradford will cover. The next game is Thursday night against the Lightning at PPG Paints Arena. Our entire hockey staff -- Bradford, Sunday, Taylor Haase and I -- will be there for that one.
THE COVERAGE
Visit our Penguins team page for everything.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins at Devils, Newark, N.J., Nov. 13, 2018 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS