I mean, jeez, Dominik Simon, anyone ever teach you to take a dive when a stick's flung up into your face?
"It's not what I'm used to," he'd answer me over a bloody bottom lip.
Really? Not even when the other team had just drawn two penalties through blatant dives?
"It's not what I'm used to," he'd repeat before heading out for stitches.
Hm. Well, good for him, I guess.
Not so good for the Penguins' overall outcome, though, as they'd be beaten by the abysmal Blackhawks -- yes, again, for an absurd 10th consecutive time -- by a 5-3 count on this Sunday night at PPG Paints Arena. It might have been different had Simon taken a spill when he was caught in the mouth by a loose blade from Chicago's Dylan Strome with 3:32 left ...
... but he didn't. He stood tall while checking his face, kept skating, kept playing. And because of that, I'm sure, neither of the referees, Dan O'Halloran nor Brad Meier, raised his right arm for what would have been a four-minute power play that would have covered the rest of regulation and afforded the Penguins a far better chance to tie, rather than giving up the empty-net goal that ended their eight-game winning streak.
How to be sure the dive would have worked?
Well, here are all three penalties charged to the Penguins on this night:
No one inside city limits will want to hear this, but all three were legit calls. Evgeni Malkin had no business putting his stick into Drake Caggiula, Tanner Pearson had no business putting his stick into Connor Murphy, and Kris Letang had no business putting his stick into David Kampf.
Worse, the first two were in the attacking zone, the third in the neutral zone.
Worse by far, the Blackhawks capitalized on two of those power plays. (The second actually came two seconds after Pearson emerged from the box, so it's not official, but it's obviously the same process.)
Equally unmistakable, however, is that all three victims -- especially the last two, who collapsed like tranquilized elephants -- exaggerated the effect of sticks making contact, yet no one was called for embellishment. Nor, as is commonly the case, was the initial infraction ignored because of such embellishment.
Mind you, I've got no firm point to any of this. Honestly.
These penalties might or might not have been why the Penguins lost. Or their inability to kill them. Or their inability to mount much offense after an early 2-0 lead, notably on a five-on-three power play in the first period. Or a soft goal or two conceded by Casey DeSmith. Or heck, I'm almost serious when I suggest it was Simon's integrity at fault, for all any of us could know.
If there's any type of point, I guess, it's that it doesn't matter.
Because of this:
If the sandwich's bread was a bit crusty, the meat in the middle was Grade A, right?
See, I covered that Dec. 12 debacle in Chicago, the one that led -- not at all coincidentally, if you ask the athletes themselves -- into the season-saving run that followed. That night at the United Center felt like the franchise was on the cusp of implosion. Everything was called into question. Everything felt up in the air, from the leadership in angst-ridden locker room to the future of Mike Sullivan to this championship core. They were too old, too slow, too stubborn, too disconnected, too pouty, and the sum was still so much less than all of that.
But all they've done since then is address each and every concern, individually and collectively, to the current stage where excellence is once again expected. Where Stanley Cup contention is once again expected.
So, a mulligan for another mystifying loss to the Blackhawks?
You bet.
These Penguins are better than this, and the difference now is they know it.
That's why, when I asked Sullivan and Jack Johnson after this game about the team's fade after the early lead, both pointed simply to special teams execution:
In other words: They're better than this, and the difference now is they know it.
• That notwithstanding, the aforementioned five-on-three was still a bummer, a 1:11 span in which the Penguins committed two giveaways, had two shots blocked and managed to put this one puck on Cam Ward:
That was it. And if there's such a thing as a bad shot on goal in hockey, it's an unscreened, advertised wrister from the top of a circle on a five-on-three. All Malkin achieved there was buying the Blackhawks a breather.
• I wasn't crazy about Duncan Keith's goal that brought a 3-3 tie. Even with Brian Dumoulin going for the block, DeSmith had set himself in plenty of time to get a clear view and still was beaten cleanly under the glove:
Almost as deflating, seconds before that shot, Johnson and Zach Aston-Reese came up with big-time shot blocks that had the bench and the crowd all revved up. There was not a thing wrong with the penalty-killing here, including the positioning when Keith scored.
Look, it'd be plain silly to blame the goaltending -- or any individual in most any team loss -- and, moreover, DeSmith made several exemplary stops following breakdowns deep in the defensive zone.
That said, with the benefit of 20/20 convenient hindsight, Sullivan had Matt Murray on the heels of a shutout of one of the NHL's most powerful offenses in the Jets, and he chose to continue a rotation where it wasn't needed. The next game is Tuesday at home against the Panthers, and the ones after that are back-to-backs Friday in Anaheim and Saturday in Los Angeles. Murray's hardly overworked for the season as a whole. The place to keep DeSmith involved could have been California.
When a coach is being gifted a No. 1 goaltender with Stanley Cup pedigree, it's OK to go ahead and unwrap.
• Running out of superlatives for Marcus Petterson's defensive consistency, so I'll switch it up and praise his puck management. Kid seldom just swats the puck away. He collects it, settles it, finds the open man, plants it on the tape.
I'd been privately debating who's made who better -- Pettersson or Johnson -- out of this partnership, and I'm leaning toward the kid.
So did Johnson, when I brought that up after the game.
"I know that I'm comfortable with him because he's so easy to play with," he told me. "I feel like it's just so easy to trust him that it makes it easier to do what I want to do."
And about that passing, "He doesn't just get rid of it. He'll hold it and make the play he wants."
Johnson's got that trait, too.
• Pearson took three sizzling long-range wrist shots, including this one in the second period ...
... at a level for that particular skill I didn't know he had, particularly when whipping it across his body, which he did on two of the three. There aren't many forwards with effective long-range wristers in the NHL, to put it mildly. Off the top of my head, I'll toss out Phil Kessel, the Sharks' Evander Kane, the Canucks' super-rookie Elias Pettersson ... and then my list falls off a cliff.
Well worth watching for more.
• Derick Brassard skated with more authority than the norm, cut through to the net with far more authority than the norm and, occasionally, offered a strong complement to Pearson and Kessel.
Next step: Perform the same way against an opponent that isn't so loose and freewheeling. Of Brassard's seven goals this season, two have come against the Red Wings, one against the Sabres, one against the Avalanche, and now this. The only ones on defensively reliable opponents came against the Islanders and the Capitals, and the latter was part of that insane 7-6 opening victory.
Just saying.
• Go right ahead and admit you were one of those handful of people in here who cheered when Chris Kunitz finally scored his first goal of the season.
And if you weren't, maybe this line from Kunitz, expressed after the game to our Taylor Haase, will bring some sentiment: “It’s been a tough year production-wise. Any time you can contribute it gives you a little confidence … I think being in a building where you have great memories, that might just give you that special feeling anytime you go on the ice.”
• It's bizarre, as I wrote the other night, that the Penguins have won 18 in a row against the Winnipeg franchise in Pittsburgh. And it's beyond bizarre that the Blackhawks, in the midst of a precipitous decline, have won 10 overall meetings in a row.
But it's also not all that hard to find a common denominator: Chicago's lineup still has plenty of people who can score, a couple of whom will wind up in the Hall of Fame. And because the Blackhawks are concurrently so loose defensively, they immediately lure the Penguins out of any sense of responsibility, and a tennis match results. Thus, the playing field gets leveled, as it becomes one set of scorers against the other, a scenario in which anything could happen.
Also, there's this, as Patrick Kane explained after three assists: "I know they won eight in a row coming into the game. They've obviously been feeling pretty good about themselves. It's a team that we can kind of compare ourselves to, as far as what's happened in the past and different histories. I think a lot of us get excited to play these guys."
• The 10-year anniversary of the 2009 championship was handled with characteristic class by all concerned, from the understated introductions of the 14 players in attendance to the video messages shown from Marc-Andre Fleury, Max Talbot, Brooks Orpik, Alex Goligoski, Ray Shero and Dan Bylsma. And with Kunitz in the house, it felt all the more relevant.
Always here in our hearts, Flower. ?
Thanks for everything - especially that epic save back in 2009. pic.twitter.com/54LW4CuD8u
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) January 7, 2019
Conspicuously missing was Pascal Dupuis.
Maybe it had nothing to do with this. But maybe it did. The official stance was that he couldn't attend because of a family emergency in Quebec, but there was also a strong undercurrent in the building that, from what our staff heard, this was too much too soon. And that's far more plausible than the emergency explanation, given that Dupuis easily could have participated in the video sessions. Talbot did his from his hotel room in Russia.
This will get resolved. This is too good a person who cares too much about the Penguins -- and vice versa -- for anything negative to resonate. But again, too much too soon.
• Oh, come on, they weren't going to win out.
• Consider the alternative: You could be supporting the archrival, a team that offers to give out life-saving equipment to a school ... but only if they win.
• To all readers who share my family's Orthodox faith, I'd like to extend a happy, healthy Christmas. Especially those of our Serbian community here in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania. We took the toughest of losses as a family in 2018, and you were there for us. We’ll never forget it.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins vs. Blackhawks, PPG Paints Arena, Jan. 6, 2019 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS