Nothing's changed for Matt Murray. And that, if you ask me, is the best part of everything that actually has changed for him.
Know what I mean?
"No," Murray would reply with a small smile when I brought this up. "Not at all."
OK, so maybe it wasn't all that well-worded.
I tried a different route: How about if he'd just tell me, after this latest prodigious performance -- 36 saves, including three clean breaks, in a 5-1 pounding of the Panthers -- if he feels like he's found himself in a good place again?
"I'm just trying to compete out there, man."
Come on. That's his stock answer, as I'd gently chide. There's got to be more.
"No, honestly, that's not stock or standard or anything. That's my mindset."
Shot to shot.
"That's it."
No extrapolating. No momentum being built. Nothing broader.
"That's all you can do, man. Just stop the next shot. Compete as hard as you can to stop the next shot. Each and every shot. Each and every read. One at a time. Keep my team in the game, and give us a chance to win."
Well, with all due respect, that's what's changed.
Before being shelved in mid-November, then missing nearly a month to a groin injury -- and unwisely trying to play through it -- Murray was a shell of his two-time Stanley Cup championship version: 4-5-1 with a 4.07 goals-against average and .877 save percentage.
He was among the NHL's worst goaltenders.
Since returning, he's gone 8-0 with a 1.24 goals-against average and .963 save percentage. In the past seven games alone, he's allowed seven total goals.
He's been the NHL's very best goaltender.
Not coincidentally, since Murray started looking like Murray, and since Casey DeSmith admirably stepped up in his absence and beyond, the Penguins started looking like the Penguins. They've reclaimed that 'swagger' Mike Sullivan was rightly complaining they'd been missing those first two months. They defend with an edge. They attack full-barrel. And on an occasion like this, when the opponent takes 1970s night too literally, they can even tough it out, too.
"I think anytime you're playing hard, you're playing well, when you look back at your goalie and see that he's calm, confident, making that big save when he needs to ... that just kind of radiates from the back out," Bryan Rust told me, almost as deftly as the two slick goals he'd just put up. "That confidence comes from there. It really does. It's an energy-builder."
Of course, when I broached that with Murray ...
"Eh, I don't know about all that," he'd reply with a shrug. "It's about stopping the next shot."
Fine, kid. Have it your way. If it's a shot-by-shot approach, the part of his hockey personality that never changes, that created this, then here's a shot-by-shot analysis to match:
The score finished lopsided, but Florida dictated possession in the first period, particularly in the final dozen minutes. So when Colton Sceviour broke free short-handed, he might have done so with the game on his blade. Bury that, and the Panthers' momentum carries through intermission, maybe further.
As it was, Murray smartly read that Jake Guentzel's backcheck angle would force Sceviour to his backhand, then stayed tall in sliding right along.
"I was just trying to stay with him, keep my blocker as close to him as I possibly could," Murray told me. "I was lucky I got a piece of it."
He wasn't lucky. Not on this one, either:
That was another short-handed break, because, hey, it was another of those nights when the Penguins' power play decided to be dangerous at the wrong end of the rink. This time, it was Jared McCann corralling an Aaron Ekblad saucer and swooping in on Murray, a two-year teammate at Sault Ste. Marie in the Ontario Hockey League. And it was Murray smoothly going full-splits to stunt the backhand try to the far post.
"I had an idea what he'd do," Murray told me. "He used to use that move all the time in practice."
What came next was a move few can execute, in practice or otherwise:
If the NHL has a silkier set of mitts, especially in tight quarters around a crease, than those of Aleksander Barkov, I haven't seen them. He's all that and then some, arguably the league's most underappreciated player.
So, when he tried stickhandling back through his own legs, then shooting through there, Murray followed the puck rather than the form and stayed square for the save.
"That one happened quick, but you expect it with that guy," Murray told me of Barkov. "I was trying to read what he wanted to do, to be honest, but at the end, you've still got to stop the shot."
Yeah, yeah.
• More than a year ago, after a morning skate at Madison Square Garden, Mike Sullivan asked if I'd ever seen any video of Zach Aston-Reese's fights in the AHL. I answered that I hadn't, but I'd heard he could take care of himself.
The coach smiled without elaboration.
Which now, at long last, makes complete sense:
Ripped the dude's helmet off, then delivered the KO punch with the same arm in the same motion.
Ever seen that before?
It sure sounded afterward, from Sullivan's rare immediate postgame injury assessment that Aston-Reese might be "out a little while," that he possibly broke his hand on Sceviour's cranium. If so, he'll be missed by the Penguins, but the greater loss will be yet another injury setback right as he's starting to roll. That's hurt him a lot already.
• Rust had one goal through 29 games. Now he's routinely wearing this kind of flair:
Those two goals gave him 10 in the past 13 games and, at the season's midpoint, he's on pace for a career-high 20.
"I've been a product of some real good plays," Rust dismissed afterward. "I'm just getting to open space, and guys are finding me."
Uh, no.
I'm not going to suggest Rust is the playoff-level answer for Sidney Crosby's right wing, but Rust shows a chemistry both with the captain and with Guentzel. And if he can come close to finishing like those sequences above, then it deserves a longer look.
Also, it's worth worrying at least a little that Patric Hornqvist keeps getting head injuries, another of which knocked him out of this game with an uncertain prognosis. I've always supported Sullivan's long-held stance that Hornqvist brings the best out of Crosby, but it's fair to consider.
• Remember that isolated advice here the other day about keeping an eye on Tanner Pearson's longer-range wristers?
Well ... a-hem:
He's got one. It's a rare weapon in the modern NHL. That's neat.
• After a whistle midway through the second period, a small scrum developed behind the Florida net. In such situations, the defensemen for the attacking team are required to stay out by the blue line. If they don't, the ensuing faceoff is moved outside the zone.
In this one, though, the Panthers' Bogdan Kiselevich took a couple shots at Crosby. And without hesitation, both of the Penguins' defensemen, Juuso Riikola and Olli Maatta, came charging forward to partake.
That's worth it.
And that's quality team unity.
As one veteran told me, "That's the red flag. Can't stand for that. Everybody in."
• Officiating didn't dictate the outcome, but Tom Chmielewski and Francois St-Laurent didn't exactly distinguish themselves. In particular, it was indefensible that they didn't call Florida's MacKenzie Weegar for an instigator -- if not a game misconduct -- for basically forcing Marcus Pettersson into a fight in the second period.
Weegar initially took a run at Riley Sheahan, then peeled off to Pettersson, dropped his gloves and instantly began whaling away. Pettersson had no choice but to drop his own and ... well, survive.
That's dangerously bad officiating. That's how people get seriously injured. It's one thing for the NHL to continue allowing players to engage willingly in fights, but it's quite another to condone an outright assault, and I've seen way too much of the latter this winter.
• Let the Pettersson parade roll on and on and on: In addition to earning his teammates' standing stick-taps for engaging Weegar, his 76.47 Corsi For percentage was by far the best of any player on either team. That means he was on the ice for 13 shot attempts by the Penguins, four for the Panthers.
This Jim Rutherford trade is taking on the feel of a heist.
• The Penguins got a Florida goal overturned by an eagle-eyed observation from Andy Saucier, their full-time, dedicated video replay whiz who contacted Sullivan behind the bench for the challenge. They'd have had another Florida goal overturned, too, if not for a bizarre decision from Toronto.
The point: Having replay people helps.
(Columnist resists the urge to mix sports, duly moves on.)
• I've been writing throughout the season that the Panthers are my No. 1 disappointing team in the league, and this sure didn't alter that. Vince Trocheck's been a big loss, no question, but there's still too much talent at hand -- and what a gifted top line of Aleksander Barkov between Jonathan Huberdeau and Evgenii Dadanov -- to be flailing about at 17-17-7.
Bob Boughner, whose still-bent nose displays how hard he played in Pittsburgh and other NHL stops, clearly couldn't stomach it anymore. He benched Huberdeau, who gave a laughable defensive effort on Rust's second goal, as well as Keith Yandle, whose laughable defensive efforts have been a career hallmark, and Mike Hoffman, who held the puck like a hand grenade. All three sat for the second and third periods.
And the coach didn't exactly apologize.
"They weren't ready to play," Boughner said. "They didn't execute, they cost us a couple goals, they didn't work hard enough ... all of the above."
He was just as rough on Roberto Luongo, who was yanked after four goals on 16 shots.
"Give their goalie credit: He played well," Boughner would say of Murray before adding, "Ours didn't."
Bet that'll be a fun team flight all the way out to Edmonton later Wednesday.
• Next up for the Penguins is an even longer trip out West, also Wednesday. They'll practice Thursday in Los Angeles, then play Friday night in Anaheim. The Ducks have lost all eight games they've played since a solid showing here in beating the Penguins, 4-2, Dec. 17.
Take care of business. Like this. Doesn't need to be pretty.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY