Anyone remember way back when John Marino was that cute, cuddly hey-this-kid-just-might-make-it story in camp?
Or when he actually did make it, straight from college to the NHL?
Or when he began bumping bona fide veterans off the blue line?
Yeah, those were simpler times, to put it mildly. Because here we are now, a week into December after the Penguins' 2-0 blanking of the Coyotes on this Friday night at PPG Paints Arena, and Marino's skating on the top pairing alongside Kris Letang, he's being entrusted with the main opposition matchups, he's taking a regular turn on penalty-killing and, at least if you ask me, he's getting tasked with saving the 2019-20 season.
Over the top?
OK, I'll word it another way: Nothing will matter more for these guys in the next month or two than how they defend. Without Sidney Crosby, among other forwards, they'll struggle to score. And without Brian Dumoulin, they'll lack by far their most formidable presence on left defense, their position of least depth.
So, Mike Sullivan and Jacques Martin were either going to concede the latter point, or they'd elevate Marino even further by having him on the top pair and sliding Letang over to the left for these two games since Dumoulin went down in St. Louis.
It isn't perfect. As Letang candidly told me after this one, "It's not my favorite," before almost instantly adding, "But it's what we've got to do right now. It's fine."
Yep.
And most important, it's working.
Tristan Jarry will get the bulk of the praise for this shutout and the one that preceded it, 3-0 over the Stanley Cup champion Blues two nights earlier. And that's as it should be. He's seen 61 pucks, and he's made 61 saves, some spectacular and none better than this double-toe magic on Arizona's Clayton Keller:
Watch his leg lift off the ice on that second one. Wow.
At the same time, absorb this : The Blues generated only six high-danger scoring chances at even-strength the other night. The Coyotes' figure was four. And that grand total of 10 included one each when the Letang-Marino pairing was on the ice.
One.
I approached Letang about his new partner.
"He's just a good, young player," came the reply. "He's still learning a lot, but he's playing really well while he's learning. He's so poised with the puck. So poised with everything."
The impact that's had is immeasurable. Even with Justin Schultz returning on this night, Dumoulin can't be replaced with a routine reshuffle of the depth chart. Jack Johnson gets exposed with additional minutes. Juuso Riikola's been a wreck. Neither Chad Ruhwedel nor Zach Trotman could handle their natural right sides, let alone a switch to the left. No one in the AHL is ready.
This pairing has to work. There isn't another answer.
I've learned enough about Marino's makeup to not waste anyone's time asking if he's ever impressed with anything he does, but I did ask after this game how he'd felt it was going with Letang.
"Great," he replied with a soft smile and the same enthusiasm one would generally reserve for unloading the dishwasher. "Obviously, I just let him play his game, feed off the rush, take what the game gives you."
Fine, whatever. If he can't be impressed with himself, I'll do it for him.
Check this out:
That was near the midpoint of the third period, shortly after Evgeni Malkin had finally scored the game's icebreaking goal. A faceoff win in the Arizona zone gets the puck back to Letang at the left point, at which point ... eh, you can see it. A semi-turnover, to be generous.
Nick Schmaltz is the one the Coyotes then spring. And Schmaltz is the one Marino just flat-out devours.
Pardon my repetition on this particular matter these past couple months, but this is what Marino does that most blows my mind. He'll hunt a skater down, engulf him like a force of nature and casually come away with the puck. Schmaltz looks fortunate to emerge from this completely clean sequence with his life.
Mentioning this to Marino, of course, met with another shrug.
"That one," he'd reply, realizing right away what I was referencing. "Hey, that's a big reason why I'm here, because I think defense first."
That's it?
"That's it."
So this is just how he rolls?
"Yeah, that's it. Just keep going, you know? Keep it simple."
• Yes, Jarry should be the No. 1 goaltender right now, an issue Mike Sullivan acknowledged he's now forcing. Since Nov. 12, he's 6-1 with a 1.57 goals-against and a .950 save percentage, and Matt Murray's 0-2-3 with a 3.99 goals-against and an .852 save percentage. There's zero room for debate there.
As if to run up the score, Jarry's ongoing shutout streak of 144:51, dating to Nov. 29, is the franchise's longest in the regular season since Marc-Andre Fleury's 165:06 from Feb. 1-11, 2015.
But starting Jarry again in Detroit, less than 24 hours after this hard night?
Uh-uh. That's three games in four days and risks undoing this little roll before it can really roll. Besides, burying Murray makes no sense.
• Malkin was out of the locker room before reporters entered -- only five minutes after the final horn, mind you -- and maybe there's a reason: He did something on that winning goal that the Coyotes claimed was illegal, though no one would say precisely what it was.
So I gave it a closer look, and it appears Malkin moved early in cleaning Derek Stepan at the left dot ...
... which allowed Malkin to pickle-stab the carom of Jake Guentzel's errant shot off the end boards behind Antti Raanta.
Stepan then whirled around and motioned toward the linesman, Derek Amell, by raising his glove to his mouth, as if to suggest Amell should've blown his whistle and booted Malkin from the circle:
"Geno's a smart guy," Tocchet told us. "He kind of cheated on the draw, and Step wasn't too happy about that. But Geno just beat our guys to the net. Give Geno credit."
Yep. The Coyotes crushed the circles all night, 32-19, but whiffed on the only one that really mattered.
• Raanta was no less sharp than Jarry but for that sequence, which still appeared to really bug him in the locker room.
‘It’s tough to take," he'd say. "Bad bounce. But that’s hockey. And that's something we practice all the time. I've got to stay on the post there. You don’t like to lose on a goal like that.’
Watch his stick, then his right leg to see what he means:
• The Penguins have been short-handed 80 times this season, fifth-fewest in the NHL, which is wonderful. But they took five penalties in this one, and Sullivan smartly seized the opportunity to pounce on that: "We're just simply taking too many penalties, and we can't do that night in and night out. The ones in the offensive zone are tough to swallow. We've got to be responsible with our sticks. We've got to stay on the right side of the puck. We've got to check with our legs and not our sticks. We can't reach, can't hook, can't hold. ... We're asking our killers to kill four or five a game, and that's a tall task."
• This was mostly a lifeless hockey game. Say what one will about valuing puck possession, but two teams barely breathing on each other while engaged in little more than pokechecking comes with a terribly low entertainment factor.
Related: The official statistics showed the Penguins outhitting the Coyotes, 54-41. No one respects Phil Spano's scorekeeping crew more than I do, but there weren't nine incidents of contact I'd have considered a hit, let alone 95. The standard for a bodycheck has changed as much as the game itself.
• Is it too soon to tack another six years onto the Brandon Tanev contract?
• It's one thing for Dominik Simon to not score and still excel in other areas, but it's starting to look like his production shortfall -- two goals in 29 games -- is short-circuiting the rest of his game, as well. He was an uncharacteristic mess all over the ice, with three giveaways -- by my own count -- and a 35.29 Corsi For percentage that was second-worst on the team. If he can't separate the two, he'll be in trouble before long.
• By the way, pay no heed to the numbers assigned to Sullivan's lines. The third line, as put out officially by the team before the game, has Sam Lafferty between Alex Galchenyuk and Simon. The fourth line has Teddy Blueger between Zach Aston-Reese and Tanev. The third line logged 7:28 of five-on-five ice time, a minute and a half less than the fourth line.
My guess is that the numbering is done to keep from demoralizing Galchenyuk. He's a career 20-goal guy, and it'd look awful if he's on the fourth line when facing his former team. Or, really, in any setting.
• The Phil Kessel video tribute was perfect, as was the crowd's loving reaction that delayed the ensuing faceoff, as was his own grinning, head-shaking reaction, both during and afterward:
Phil's fun. Pittsburgh treated him as such. It was time to move on, but it was a one-of-a-kind fit, one that'll be embraced around here forever.
If you missed the tribute:
Thanks for the Cups, the laughs, and the thrills.
All the best to you, two-time Stanley Cup Champion @PKessel81. pic.twitter.com/PozrJmvu8i
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) December 7, 2019
• Taylor Haase has all the coverage Saturday from Detroit. Sunday and I are flying out to Phoenix for another Pittsburgh-Arizona matchup involving another locally beloved bird.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins vs. Coyotes, PPG Paints Arena, Dec. 6, 2019 -- MATT SUNDAY / DKPS