Kris Letang couldn't sleep. Not a wink.
"Wired," he was explaining to me late Thursday night. "I tried. No chance. Way too wired, you know?"
No, I don't know. None of us could know.
Unless, of course, we'd been crosschecked by Alexander Ovechkin across the ribs. Then butt-ended off a faceoff. And then, we'd spent the rest of our Wednesday evening in Washington returning the favor, tormenting the Capitals' living legend at every turn. Glove to the face. A jab here, a tug there, a stare and glare everywhere.
"I wasn't going to leave him alone," Letang recalled thinking throughout. "Stay on him. Just stay on him. He's got 50 pounds on me. I've got to play that much harder than he does."
He did that, and then some, within the Penguins' victory down in D.C., somehow overshadowing all of the above with a masterful overall showing of actual hockey, his smartest, his sharpest in an already superlative season. Defensively, offensively and all points between, he was the best player on a rink shared by Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Ovechkin and the last two teams to lift the Stanley Cup.
I saw it. You saw it. The whole hockey world saw it on a national telecast.
But he lived it.
And no, there wasn't about to be any shut-eye afterward. Not on the overnight takeoff-and-landing charter flight back to Pittsburgh, when a good many of his teammates were still whooping up their most satisfying victory of a weird winter. Not once he got home, either. He remembered tossing and turning, switching sides, flipping the pillow ... nothing.
"You're still reliving the game," he'd say. "And when you do that, you're reliving the thoughts, the emotion and everything."
Eventually, he gave up. And with another game Thursday night against the Wild, he decided to get on with business right about sunrise. Out of bed. Small breakfast. Messed around with the kids a bit. Then hopped in the car and headed down to PPG Paints Arena for what would usually be the team's morning skate, except that Mike Sullivan had already canceled this one right after the flight in hopes his boys could buy a few extra winks.
Not this one. He and only two other players were seen poking around the home locker room: Juuso Riikola, because he'd be summoned to take concussed Jamie Oleksiak's place in the lineup, and Crosby because ... well, Crosby.
And Letang's first task ...
"Cold tub," he told me with a broad grin. "Needed to wake up."
You know, from not sleeping.
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Oh, there would be sleeping on this night, but that was saved for the 18,435 on hand for one of the season's rare stinkers, this 2-1 topping of the Wild. That's how it goes with Minnesota, perpetually among the NHL's most passive teams.
So this would present a wholly different challenge for the Penguins as a collective: There was no chance they'd be able to rekindle their fire from Washington, not at that level, and this opponent wasn't about to help in that regard.
Just ask Letang:
"They don't finish all their checks."
Ouch. He comes complete with candor. But also the truth. Even though the Penguins had just expended every conceivable effort, physically and mentally, in Washington, even though they played almost all of that game with five defensemen, even though the Wild had their feet up in a Downtown hotel here, Minnesota's plan apparently wasn't about to deviate into anything remotely aggressive.
The peak version of the Penguins is the one with their buttons pushed. Same with Letang. But this time, they'd have to push their own.
"It's not like we had to talk about it or anything," Letang told me. "We know we need the points. We knew what we needed to do, just play our game and maybe stay a little more patient."
Safe to say they -- and he -- checked all the boxes: Letang again was the best player on the rink, leading his team in shots at six and attempted shots at eight, logging a game-high 26:37 of ice time the day after logging an insane 32:22, out-Corsi-ing everyone on either side at 58.33 percent, and still so much more:
This is an officially registered hit on Minnesota's Luke Kunin, little more in isolation.
And yet, it's the first period, the score's tied, the Wild's hoping to set up in the Pittsburgh zone and Letang, smartly sensing that everything behind him has been tracked -- Brian Dumoulin's all over Charlie Coyle behind the net, and all three forwards are filling the slot --opts to revisit Washington and finish Kunin into the boards. Kunin does still get the puck through to a curling Coyle, but Kunin himself is down and out in the corner, never to recover. The Penguins' three forwards triangle around Coyle, and the possession is toast.
The check paid off.
This is also from the first period:
Letang's foundation is his brilliant skating. When weighing skating in hockey, the subject should never be limited to straightaway speed. It's stops and starts, lateral movements, airtight twists and turns, strength and balance and so much more. And for a defenseman, in particular, half the battle is being able to go backward at pretty much the same rate the opponent's going forward.
Well, what's up there is a Letang-esque eclectic mix: As the Wild high-tail it with speed into the neutral zone, Letang takes a couple of forward strides, swivels around to front the mega-fast Mikael Granlund. That swivel alone will get most defensemen scorched, but not this one. In fact, once Granlund feeds to the opposite wing for Jason Zucker and can go full-blast to the net, Letang swivels again -- barely losing any momentum, mind you -- and recovers in time to deflect away Zucker's return attempt to Granlund.
There aren't stats for that, my friends.
One more, this from the third period and the personal favorite:
I mean ... what's there to add to that?
The Penguins are protecting a one-goal lead late in regulation, this guy's barely left the rink two nights in a row and, rather than simply swatting away the Wild's lateral entry across the Pittsburgh blue line -- it wasn't much of a pass, honestly -- Letang pounces on it, pokes it ahead to himself, gathers it and ... positively erupts on his skates.
That's the optimal Letang, when he's defending and attacking in a single swoop. That's the Game 6 San Jose model.
"I'm just doing my best, trying to help the team win," he'd predictably say to something along those lines. "We're all doing that now. We need points."
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Never doubt the core.
I've done it sporadically over the past decade. We all probably have. It's never aged well when we have.
We wondered aloud after Crosby's concussion episode if he'd ever again regain his pre-Winter Classic form. And then he exceeded it by a measure of two additional Cups and all else. He's a more complete, more valuable player now than he was then.
We've wondered aloud about Evgeni Malkin. Heck, that's happening these past few weeks as he's gone into another of those maddening, mistake-filled slumps. But he's always bounced back and always will. In these past two games alone, he's skated with as much authority as I've seen from him all season. Still some goofy decisions, but that water will find its level, too.
We wonder about Letang all the time, right?
He's high-risk. He tries things others don't. But he does that because others can't. And the reward, as he's demonstrated over a decade of excellence, has been the very best player at his position in franchise history.
Don't agree with that?
Eh, sleep on it.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins vs. Wild, PPG Paints Arena, Dec. 20, 2018 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS