COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Matt Murray turned over his right wrist to the underside. It had still been bandaged, as is the precautionary case for everyone in his profession, so I couldn't gauge if there'd been any puck damage.
But yeah, a puck did hit there. Beneath the blocker.
And on the shaft of his stick.
And in other more common locations for a goaltender.
"Make the save," he'd say to me upon turning that wrist back over. "Whatever it takes, make the save."
These Penguins aren't perfect, as played out again Saturday night at Nationwide Arena. They were blitzkrieged early by the Blue Jackets and wound up actually losing to those guys, 4-1, for the first time in nine meetings. A bunch of mistakes were made. A bunch of matters will need to be addressed by, oh, 7:38 p.m. Sunday, before facing the sizzling Bruins at PPG Paints Arena.
But here's what, from this perspective, ought to outlive this weekend whichever way this turns out: This is championship-level goaltending we're witnessing.
"Amazing," was Jared McCann's term, and he was done.
"Unreal," came Erik Gudbranson, and he was far from done. "As I guy who's playing in front of him, I can't tell you what kind of faith I've got in him. When a goalie can bail you out like that, the way he did in this game, it's huge for a playoff push and ..."
He shook his head.
" ... and you're disappointed you can't get him the win when he plays that well."
No doubt. The Penguins' three-game winning streak and six-game points streak were both stunted. They stayed stuck at seventh in the East, separated by a single win from the Canadiens on the periphery. And, just for fun, they might well have squandered a potential delicacy in dealing John Tortorella and the eighth-place Blue Jackets one whale of a body blow to their own chances.
As it was, they'll have to settle for this:
Wait, no, they won't have to settle for that, because then there was this in the second period:
Of the first, on Boone Jenner, shortly following Jenner's icebreaker from a similar spot, Murray recalled, "Yeah, I was just trying to make the next save. They're a team that comes out hard, and you've got to give them credit: They threw a lot of pucks at the net, got a lot of chances. So I was just trying to weather the storm, I guess."
Of the second, on a mortified Markus Nutivaraa, seemingly shooting from beach to ocean, Murray recalled, "It’s tough, I guess. Wide-open shot and wide-open pass back door, you've got to play the shot first, so that’s what I tried to do. And they make a nice play and you get desperate sometimes."
I've covered the NHL for a quarter-century. I can't count many occasions where I saw something live that I didn't fully comprehend even if I'd seen it clearly. That happened twice on this one night.
And on another night, we'd have been glowing about this stirringly aggressive approach a little later to engulf Artemi Panarin, one of the game's more gifted finishers ...
... or this sliding, straddling beauty on Josh Anderson ...
... among his 33 saves on the evening.
On the one immediately above, watch that extra extension of the right skate at the close. That's what I'm talking about. Technical performance could never be an issue with Murray, but what had been missing for much of this season was that extra. He'd always been capable of it, he's shown it from time to time, and now it's nonstop.
Look, I'm the one who wrote from the outdoor game in Philadelphia fearing for this team's goaltending, openly suggesting Jim Rutherford should seek support at the position. I won't take it back, either. Murray had become maddening, appearing to steady himself only to lay an egg like that one a game or two later.
I'm also the one who wrote from that massive bounceback in Montreal that I hadn't seen him look that authoritative in months, and I closed that column with the following:
Murray’s had other false alarms over the winter. Maybe this was another. But if it wasn’t, then there’s an entirely new dynamic in play.
Welcome to the new dynamic, my friends. And I express that with confidence for two reasons:
1. Saves like those up top don't happen on one night at a snap. They're a cumulative process. Any goaltending coach will back this.
2. Since returning from a lower-body injury in mid-December, Murray has under-the-radar run up a .930 save percentage, fourth-best in the NHL among goaltenders with a minimum 15 starts in that span.
I asked Murray, as I had in Montreal, if anything, anything had been altered about his approach on or off the ice along the way:
That's a no. In fact, he'd additionally criticize his work on this night, dissatisfied in part with a short-side shorty by Cam Atkinson he felt he could have cut off to the blocker side.
"I made some pretty bad reads, honestly," he'd claim.
Funny, but when I took that to Atkinson, he offered nothing but praise:
So did Mike Sullivan: "I thought Matt was terrific. I thought he made some 10-bell saves to keep us in the game."
Evgeni Malkin, too: "We’re lucky we have Murray on our team. The last week or two he’s played unbelievable. We need to help him. Sometimes we lose players in the D-zone, we give them great chances to score. We have to play a little bit more tight in the D-zone, and we’ll be fine."
It starts in the back. From there, as hockey history has illustrated for a century and change, all things are possible.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
THREE STARS
My curtain calls go to …
1. Matt Murray
Penguins goaltender
Could have claimed all three, was officially awarded none here, which is hilarious.
2. Cam Atkinson
Blue Jackets right winger
A razor-sharp shorty, a 170-foot empty-netter, seven shots and nine attempts for the resident gunner.
3. Josh Anderson
Blue Jackets right winger
More of a factor than he should have been allowed to be, with seven hits, a couple of them illegal but uncalled.
THE GOOD
If it seemed like Marcus Pettersson never left the rink, that's because only his goaltender logged more ice time than this 23:36. He was used in all situations, even, strikingly, as the lone defenseman in a four-on-three power play in the first period alongside Malkin, Sidney Crosby and Phil Kessel.
"I'm not sure Marcus has ever been on a four-on-three," Sullivan replied when I brought that up. "But when we don't have our top two power-play defensemen at our disposal ..."
Kris Letang is out, and Justin Schultz had to leave this game for a brief spell after a puck to the face.
" ... you know, we think that highly of Marcus that he would be the next guy. We really like his game. He's just a good player, a good two-way defenseman."
He wound up with an outstanding 60.0 Corsi For rating, three blocked shots, a takeaway and, most impressive, he was on for one of the Blue Jackets' nine high-danger chances.
Pettersson mostly shrugs when I bring up anything he does well, and this wasn't an exception.
"I wish I could do more," he said. "We all do, for how unbelievable Muzz was."
His partner's been just as good, which compels me to add that Gudbranson had easily his most active stick since arriving from Vancouver, including this slick one-handed, backhand poke to himself in the first period:
"You kind of have to play that way with this team," Gudbranson told me of the active stick. "I feel like I'm doing more of that, but it's always been something I can do."
THE BAD
Giveaways, giveaways, giveaways. Ten in all. Taylor Haase has that in her Drive to the Net.
Almost as bad: Allowing the Blue Jackets to be the storm they had to weather.
How this sort of thing gets pre-ordained in hockey has always been and will forever be a mystery to me, but it remains commonly accepted that one side will be the aggressor and the other will be the one attempting to withstand that. And sure enough, the Penguins apparently discussed this beforehand.
"We talked about how they were going to come out with a lot of energy and try to run us out of the building in the first 10 minutes," Zach Aston-Reese told me. "I think it took a bit for us to respond, but we weathered it in the second half of the period. But we could've responded better."
Or made the other side respond.
THE PLAY
Phil fell.
There are few things that look worse on a hockey rink than a hockey player flat-out falling, but that same power-play breakout sequence we've witnessed a million times -- last defenseman out of the zone dropping to a late-trailing Kessel -- went awfully awry to set up Atkinson's snipe past Murray.
It happens.
As Malkin tried to explain for his bud, seated nearby and firing his equipment into his bag, “He fell down. It’s not like it’s a mistake. How many times will you see that? Probably never."
But the real pivotal point just might have been a sequence later in the second period in which McCann oh-so-narrowly missed tying it up off a two-on-one feed from Crosby. Matt Sunday has that in his View from Ice Level.
THE CALL
Dominik Simon's the scapegoat these days. I get it. There always has to be one with this fan base and, now that Jack Johnson's settled into some serious steadiness, the mantle's been passed.
I hate scapegoating.
But I hated Simon's showing on this night that much more. Zero points, two shots, three attempts, two giveaways, a bizarre icing in the third period and, believe it or not, a lousy Corsi For rating, to boot, at 48.28.
And thus, I hated more than any of that Sullivan's decision to keep him on the top line, rather than swinging right back McCann. This switch was made in the second period of the previous meeting, and it made modest sense, as it gave the third line a jolt. But the third line all too often is the priority for this coaching staff, dreaming of scoring depth, when it should always be on the top two.
Crosby and Jake Guentzel weren't at their best, and that isn't all on Simon. But supporting that effort with the best possible option has to be the priority. McCann needs to be right back there against the Bruins.
THE OTHER SIDE
The Blue Jackets had lost eight in a row to the Penguins, and Sergei Bobrovsky hadn't looked remotely competent against them since the eighth-grade picnic, as a great man is known to say.
But it had to be more important to these guys to get two points, stuck on the periphery of the Eastern playoff picture, right?
OK, so maybe not. To experience the environment here is to grasp that everything about this franchise is built on Pittsburgh envy. And even on this night, it seemed nothing mattered more.
That was evident from the opening shift, when Anderson charged from halfway across the rink to crush Simon -- uncalled -- and bodies were banged in all corners, mostly by blue sweaters.
"I'm excited for the guys," Tortorella said afterward. "I'm not going to get too amped up. That's a big win for us. If you go into these two games and you split against Pitt, I guess you leave happy."
Ugh. 'Pitt' is a college. Pittsburgh is the city. Not a soul in our city refers to Pittsburgh as 'Pitt,' any more than they refer to the state of Connecticut as 'UConn.'
But I digress: The game eventually settled. As Atkinson told me, "We really just started making sure we were taking care of the puck in the second and third periods." But there couldn't be any masking what the intention was in coming out. Columbus' two highest single-game hit totals of the season came against the Penguins, including a season-high 46 the other night.
In this one: 22.
Hockey works. Maybe they'll figure that out here and win a playoff series for the first time in their 18-year existence.
Oh, and as for Bob, who made 28 saves but wasn't severely tested, he was asked about his run of failure against this team and replied, "Statistics live in the past. You have to go out there and you create the history.”
Regular-season game in March. That's history.
THE DATA
• Malkin's assist on Aston-Reese's second-period goal has him two points shy of 1,000:
• Crosby saw his goal-scoring streak snapped at six games, registering one shot and four attempts.
• Patric Hornqvist had hockey's version of baseball's sombrero with a minus-4 rating, on the rink for all of Columbus' goals, but it's terribly misleading: He also had an exemplary 60.87 Corsi For rating, hurt primarily by being out for only one high-danger chance in the Penguins' favor. Someone end plus-minus already.
• The Penguins' undefeated streak on the road against Metro teams ended at 7-0-1.
• The 14th short-handed goal allowed leads the NHL. Only the Panthers are even within two. The league median figure is seven.
THE INJURIES
• Kris Letang, defenseman, missed his sixth game with an upper body injury. He skated Saturday in Cranberry.
• Olli Maatta, defenseman, has a separated left shoulder sustained Feb. 11. He’s on IR. He also skated Saturday in Cranberry.
• Bryan Rust, forward, missed his fifth game with a lower-body injury.
• Chad Ruhwedel, defenseman, missed his fifth game with an upper-body injury.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Guentzel—Crosby—Simon
Aston-Reese—Malkin—Kessel
McCann—Bjugstad—Hornqvist
Blueger—Cullen—Wilson
Johnson—Schultz
Dumoulin—Trotman
Pettersson—Gudbranson
• And for Tortorella's Blue Jackets:
Panarin—Dubois—Atkinson
Dzingel—Duchene—Bjorkstrand
Foligno—Jenner—Anderson
Dubinsky—Wennberg—Nash
Werenski—Jones
Nuutivaara—Savard
Harrington—McQuaid
THE SCHEDULE
The Penguins are right back in action tonight, back home against the Bruins. There will be no morning skate for either team, obviously, as both played Saturday night, with Boston winning at home, 3-2, over the Senators. Taylor, Sunday, Chris Bradford and I will be there. Sullivan will address reporters at 5:30 p.m.
THE COVERAGE
Visit our team page for everything.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins at Blue Jackets, Columbus, Ohio, March 9, 2019 - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS