It wasn't exactly tough to tell that Nick Bjugstad and Jared McCann were ecstatic about their arrival in Pittsburgh.
Meaning, first and foremost, that they'd made it at all.
I mean, they'd just been whisked down a wintry Parkway West by an Allegheny County Police escort. Then dropped off at PPG Paints Arena's loading dock 34 minutes before faceoff. Then met in the locker room by Dana Heinze's entire four-man equipment staff with a phone-arranged assortment of skates, sweaters and pads to speed up the suiting up. Then handed a flask of Red Bull while trudging through the tunnel out to the ice, each consuming a chug and a half en route. Then ushered to the home team's bench, finally visible to the crowd standing behind already-seated backup goaltender Matt Murray -- and I witnessed this occur in operatic harmony -- precisely in time for Jeff Jimerson's opening syllable of 'O Canada.'
This was at 7:04 p.m.
The puck dropped at 7:08.
They were Panthers in the morning, Penguins by nightfall, and Vin Diesel's supporting cast all afternoon.
"It was pretty surreal," Bjugstad would share later through a smile as big as his eyes. "I've had dreams every once in a while where I'm late to a game. That's what it felt like."
"It was pretty crazy," McCann concurred, mere moments after muttering, "Never seen this many cameras in my life."
Yeah, they're happy to be here. I heard that afterward from them, from Jim Rutherford, from Mike Sullivan, from others in the organization. And not in the obligatory way one usually hears stuff like that.
But honestly, that's not at all what was most striking about this scene.
Rather, it was how happy the victors were.
Not just the eventual 5-3 victors over the Senators on this night, but the seriously resounding victors in the seismic trade that sent Derick Brassard, Riley Sheahan and three picks in the 2019 NHL Draft to Florida for Bjugstad and McCann.
Oh, Rutherford was plenty composed when he and I met after this game, electing to focus on the players' enthusiasm about the trade.
"I know these two are excited about being here," the GM told me of Bjugstad and McCann. "This is a new opportunity for them, certainly an opportunity to be on a contender. Florida's had some injuries, but they're a really good, up-and-coming team. But the history here of winning, I think, is going to be good for these guys."
Sullivan had the same emphasis in his postgame press conference, saying after a stoic assessment of their speed, skill and versatility, "I think they're both excited to be Pittsburgh Penguins."
OK, here's what they won't say: On Thursday, the day before the trade, Rutherford followed his own protocol in informing anyone with a need to know about the now-percolating talks with Dale Tallon, his counterpart in Sunrise, Fla. That meant primarily his assistants, his advance scouts and, of course, Sullivan and his staff.
The reaction, based on what I was told by one of those informed at the time, ranged from disbelief to dizziness.
Or, as one of them recalled for me late Friday night, "It was like, 'You've got to be f--ing kidding me.' We didn't think it was real."
I'll be honest: I wasn't floored by the trade upon first hearing of it, maybe colored by resonating disappointment that Brassard was such a bust and that I was as wrong about that acquisition as most of the hockey world.
But, upon weighing this further after experiencing all the giddiness in this building, eager to try to figure out what had everyone so fired up, it became clearer in context that I could probably best break down into five primary points:
1. No one should have wanted Brassard anywhere. Not at needing to pick up a $3 million salary. Not after he'd performed at a comatose level here for nearly a calendar year. But Rutherford and Sullivan were able to sustain Brassard's value -- six teams had become potential suitors, if you can believe it -- well after I'd reported way back on Dec. 1, based on two front-office sources, that they were exasperated by him and wanted to trade him.
That made me no friends within the team, but it was unmistakably accurate. As was the fact that Brassard would be gone before the NHL's Feb. 25 trade deadline.
Still, Rutherford kept cool and waited until closer to the deadline, when markets always heat up. And in all that time, neither he nor Sullivan sent a solitary signal that might have devalued the asset. Brassard wasn't benched or berated. He didn't have his role diminished. If anything, they continued to talk him up, pump him up, cleverly protect him from further injury like they did with that transparent scratch, even if a healthy portion of that positivity, I'm sure, was an authentic attempt to see if he could stick.
He couldn't, of course, but the bigger objective was achieved in a way it never could have been before Christmas.
2. Brassard, 31, and Sheahan, 27, are both due to be unrestricted free agents this summer. Bjugstad, 26, and McCann, 22, are younger and both under team control for years.
Stop and think about it. This alone would rank No. 1 on this list if not for someone actually coveting Brassard.
3. Sullivan's lineup options now make much more sense. Both Bjugstad and McCann can play center or left wing, though they stayed at center for this game. Brassard and Sheahan did, too, but Brassard only did it with vigor when he was alongside Sidney Crosby, and Sheahan was robustly ineffective. I get the strong sense one or both of Bjugstad and McCann will wind up on the left side once Evgeni Malkin's back next week, and that's fine. As this winter has illustrated, including with another center/left winger now in the fold in Teddy Blueger, there's no such thing as an overload at center.
4. Bjugstad and McCann add size, speed, skill, and both have legitimately more scoring potential:
They've also got a straight-ahead approach that neither Brassard nor Sheahan did, to understate that terribly. And let's not leave Sheahan off the hook on the latter count. He was the Penguins' biggest forward, deployed in a bottom-six role, and he almost never played that way. No one needed him to be peak-era Jordan Staal, but neither was he needed to be the polar opposite.
Bjugstad's 6-6 with equally big-time wheels, as he frequently showed in this game, and has an imposing shot he can release from surprising distances. McCann's 6-1, even faster and with top-shelf hands in tight. Both can play multiple positions, win faceoffs, help on special teams and, by all accounts, come with impeccable character.
Oh, and both are former first-round picks, and a little pedigree never hurts for a team that's spent a decade selling off its own.
Speaking of which ...
5. Sending out a second-round pick and two fourth-rounders hurts. I'm on record as hoping Rutherford does more, not less, to build future draft classes. But be very sure Florida would have rather had the Penguins' first-rounder. And be just as sure that Rutherford's scouts, who generally operate in a strafed landscape, are grateful to still be holding that pick, just as they're grateful that one of those peddled fourth-rounders had just been returned in the Jamie Oleksiak trade.
This had to be a relief for Rutherford, in particular. He's as passionate and competitive as any sports executive I've covered. As much as it had been eating him alive early in the 2017-18 season that he couldn't find a third-line center, it had to be that much more painful to give up so much for Brassard and receive precious little. He'd let down himself and, no doubt worse in his eyes, had let down the team.
The old keeper just made one hell of a save.
• Best of all, at least from this perspective, the Penguins as a whole get a welcome jolt of energy. Both these players, plus Blueger, are more consistently competitive than those they've replaced. That's a quarter of the forward corps, which we can all agree has represented the crux of the consistency issues.
I'd bet anything Rutherford shares this stance, though I couldn't get him to bite after the game.
When I asked if this trade was made, in part, because it could bring that consistent energy, he replied, "When you bring in players this time of year, it should bring some energy," pointing to the newcomers' own extra fire.
When I followed up by focusing on the Penguins' longstanding lack of consistency, he came back, "The consistency thing, if you look around the league, seems to be pretty standard. It’s up and down. Other than Tampa, which has pretty much cruised through the season, most teams have had their ups and downs. But with that being said, the things with our inconsistency are all fixable things."
Sullivan came as close as anyone to acknowledging this, saying of Bjugstad and McCann, "They're two guys who can fit into the lineup here and have the ability to play the game we're trying to play."
• So wait, the Panthers picked up two rentals while 11 points out of the East's final wild card spot at 20-21-8?
They did win their final three before the All-Star break before falling Friday night in Sunrise to the Predators, 4-1, and Tallon did tell reporters on that beat, "We got two good players that can help us in the run here, that have experience and have talent and fit a need for us."
But he unquestionably steered closer to the truth when acknowledging the Panthers' real goal was cap relief toward the 2019-20 season -- estimated savings of $5.3 million -- that he pledged to invest into the free-agent market this summer. Also, he acknowledged that stocking up on draft picks was a priority.
That makes far more sense.
• That said, Tallon also described Sheahan as "hard-nosed" and "a physical player." Any scout who might have scripted that on a report should be out of work by day's end.
• Brassard and Sheahan will both be flipped. Bank on it. Maybe to Winnipeg and/or Columbus, teams actively pursuing help at center.
"If we can continue that and get on a hot streak like we did last year, then they'll stay," Tallon said. "If it looks like we're going to fall out… then we'll decide before the deadline what we're going to do. Performance will dictate what we do with these players."
• Go nuts: Tear apart Rutherford's original Brassard trade into oblivion.
But keep in mind, first, that the same high-stakes approach contributed immensely to two of the franchise's five Stanley Cup championships and that it's unfathomable for all trades to bear fruit.
Keep in mind, next, that the greatest error in judgment on Brassard was that his speed and playoff history would translate to the Sullivan system. It didn't. At all. Because, as became painfully apparent, he was a far better fit for a passive, counterattacking system like that of his previous employers, the Senators -- Guy Boucher's 60-minute slopfest was on display again in this game -- than one in which he'd have to grind it out. In Ottawa, he'd backpedal, pick off a pass, burst forward on a two-on-one and finish. No fuss, no muss.
That was never going to fly in Pittsburgh, and experienced hockey people should have seen that.
• The game was a bore, not just because Boucher was in town but because the Penguins did just enough to emerge on top.
Bryan Rust and Jake Guentzel scoring two fine goals each offered some fun, but the highlight had to be Blueger's icebreaker 3:19 after the opening faceoff ...
... because it was his first in the NHL and because it was emblematic of his two-way play, given that it began with his own keep at the Ottawa blue line.
Before Heinze brought him the taped-up, mantelpiece puck, I asked the kid if that added anything to the experience:
Blueger was really sharp overall, by the way. As Sullivan replied to my question, "He did a lot of good things, not just the goal."
• There remains no stranger sight over this entire season than Rust rising up from completely hopeless at scoring to routinely going bar down, as he did with these two bullets over Anders Nilsson's glove:
It's almost as if he rediscovered the virtue of soaking up that extra split-second to size up the shot:
• Jack Johnson bashing is hip on social media and on talk shows, but I don't partake because I don't agree. He handles a good many defensive responsibilities better than most seem to recognize, and that's probably because a lot of minds were made up the moment he was signed to that still-jarring five-year, $14.5 million contract.
That said, he had a lousy night here. He was beaten on Ottawa's final two goals, allowing the Senators to pull within 4-3 at 15:08 of the third on Matt Duchene's self-made breakaway, and his plus-2 rating and assist shouldn't hide that.
Maybe it was coincidence, but Johnson got an extended visit in the room afterward from Sergei Gonchar.
• Johnson's partner, Marcus Pettersson, isn't popular, either, but this time I'm talking about opponents.
Yet again, he was the relentless target of another team's ire, this time on Zack Smith's high elbow ...
... followed by Smith freaking out on Pettersson as he proceeded to the box.
I mentioned out on the West Coast to this rather cordial young man that, if he's doing something evil to all these people, I'm having an impossible time picking it up from press boxes. And I repeated it after this game.
"I don't know," he'd reply with a sly grin. "I'm a pretty nice guy. Maybe they just don't like how I look."
• The Penguins' next opponent hasn't won a Cup since 1967, the final year in which the NHL was a six-team pickup league. It hasn't even reached a single Final in that half-century and change.
Feels like a duty to share that.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins vs. Senators, PPG Paints Arena, Feb. 1, 2019 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS