Kovacevic: Living on the right side of the puck

I'd barely begun the question for Nick Bjugstad ...

"Are you starting to see this team turning and ... ?"

... when he smiled and smoothly interjected, "Oh, definitely. I mean, we just talked about this in Montreal. And I knew you'd be asking after this one, too."

Wonderful. Nothing like being exceedingly predictable.

But hey, if any issue bears pounding relentlessly with these Penguins, from the inside or outside, it should be the primary reason they ultimately prevailed over the surprisingly stubborn Panthers, 3-2 in overtime Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena.

"Yeah, it's a fast game they wanted to play," Bjugstad would proceed. "So this was a matter of staying on the right side of the puck but also making sure we had our feet moving. Those guys wanted to go. We had to go with them. And I feel like we did."

Damned right they did.

Vent as one will over the particulars, as it wasn't always pretty, but this game could be condensed to three principal occurrences:

1. Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel were awesome.

2. Vince Trocheck and Aleksander Barkov might have been more awesome.

3. The Penguins' commitment to defending nullified that last one.

I know, I know, I'm probably starting to sound as monotonous to readers as I am to Bjugstad. But get used to it, because this is what it'll take for these guys to not just make the Stanley Cup playoffs but to do actual damage.

It'll take this:

That's Trocheck, the Upper St. Clair kid, and he'd already been putting on a sizzling show for the family and friends for whom he'd left tickets, winding up behind the Florida net, revving it up through the neutral zone and dishing to Mike Hoffman up the right wing. Once the Pittsburgh blue line was gained, he got the puck right back, now all the more dangerous.

But look at the Penguins up there, and bear in mind this was the Evgeni Malkin line. Look at Malkin apply back-pressure to Trocheck. Look at Zach Aston-Reese come up from the front to achieve the same. Then look at future Selke nominee Phil Kessel flying back with Hoffman to force Hoffman's dish back.

Finally, look at Erik Gudbranson use that long reach for a one-handed jab that popped the puck away from Trocheck for an easy clear by Aston-Reese.

This isn't the Panthers doing anything wrong, my friends. This is the Mike Sullivan defense when it's applied properly. It's everyone on the rink. It's respecting the opponents' speed, it's keeping up with that speed, but more than anything, it's staying on the right side of the puck so that speed still has layers to beat.

The striking result on this night: The Penguins finished with 17 high-danger scoring chances to the Panthers' four.

F-O-U-R.

Another result: The Panthers generated four total attempts off the rush and zero off rebounds.

Z-E-R-O.

Same number of rebound attempts the Penguins conceded three nights earlier in Montreal.

Trocheck sure noticed.

"You see how they're getting breakaways or two-on-ones," he said of the Penguins, "while the chances we were getting were from the outside a little bit too much."

Loved even more how Gudbranson laid it out for me afterward: "It's huge for us as a team. I'm new here, a couple other guys are new, but we all can see that already. It makes it so difficult to play against us, when we're playing above, when we're reloading in the O-zone the way we can. Honestly, I think we've done a good job of it lately."

They have, and to elaborate on Gudbranson's "playing above" and reloading in the O-zone, he's basically citing the same trait -- staying on the right side of the puck -- but at both ends of the ice. This is an oversimplification, but Sullivan wants his players' bodies between the puck and their goaltender at all points on the rink. Or at least, he wants that as the foundation of their warp-speed mindset. And if he gets that, he cuts down on both odd-man breaks, which tend to originate in the attacking zone, and on poor positioning in the defensive zone.

"There's no question that mindset's in here right now," Bjugstad said. "Especially over the past week, you can just feel it. We're going out and taking care of that, and everything else follows."

I'll wait till Thursday to pester him on this again, I suppose.

• If the Penguins do that Thursday and Saturday against the Blue Jackets, there will be no playoffs in Ohio this spring.

• The reason Roberto Luongo's still in the NHL at age 40 is that he can still stretch his legs out longer than most, as he did in stoning Guentzel from point-blank range with 5:36 left in regulation:

I share this solely because it speaks volumes about Guentzel's confidence to travel all the way around that same leg pad, as he did on that workman-like overtime breakaway:

I asked Guentzel why he'd try that, given Luongo's rep.

"I don't know," he answered, albeit with a knowing grin. "I really felt like I could get it if I made the move I wanted."

Matt Murray, seated nearby, shook his head.

• No one on the Panthers, not Trocheck, not Barkov, shoots the puck like Hoffman. He's likely the last guy on that side any goaltender would want to see with this chance late in a tied game:

That's a game-winning save by Murray, with 8:53 remaining, and it's precisely what the Penguins hadn't been getting from him most of the winter. But they got that here and, in a continuation from Montreal, he stayed aggressive, challenging Hoffman despite thick traffic at his crease.

"I'm feeling good out there," was all I could get out of him. "Just doing my best."

• Five multiple-point games in a row, the 48th player in NHL history to achieve 1,200, a standing recognition for a standing O for the latter and, oh, yeah, this:

Never take him for granted.

• Anyone who thinks Dominik Simon stinks either has their radio turned up too loud or only watches the highlights. He was all over the puck all night. And every second he's got it, the other team doesn't.

• It's only one game, but this was the first where, of the two Florida trade acquisitions, Bjugstad was markedly better than McCann. Don't label Bjugstad too early. He's a good hockey player. But also, in fairness, don't be tough on McCann over one down night. Remember, he had his lower back blasted into the boards in Montreal by Brendan Gallagher.

• A hearty congratulations here to Matt Cullen, the player and the person. Playing 1,500 hockey games at any level is unfathomable, never mind doing so in the NHL and with all that grit. And class.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY