Maybe this whole affair flipped when the backup goaltender flicked a half-the-rink aerial pass to find the fourth-line center for ... um, a three-on-five breakaway, backhand beauty?
Had to be that, right?
I mean, look at this thing:
Casey DeSmith to Teddy Blueger, coast-to-coast, pulled the Penguins within one goal at a point where, as Blueger would later recall, "You're really only thinking about defending, so it's a real plus, a real boost."
Down two men. Yeah, no kidding. Maybe that was "the pivot," as Mike Sullivan described it.
Or maybe it was Brandon Tanev inspiring with a sacrificial shot block on Alexander Ovechkin. Or DeSmith coolly rejecting a Washington three-on-none. Or the collective anger that accompanied Marcus Pettersson getting blindsided out of the game by T.J. Oshie. Or additionally losing Juuso Riikola, leaving the defense corps short by two. Or Evgeni Malkin finally breaking through with an actual goal following an actual shot he actually didn't pass up.
Or hey, it could've been all of the above.
Regardless, whatever it was, the Penguins' remarkable transformation from a rancid opening 25 minutes to this buried rebound by Sidney Crosby ...
... brought a 5-4 overtime victory over the Capitals that was, in the span of this single Tuesday night, as underwhelming as it was uplifting.
But don't take my word for it.
"I wish I had an explanation for the start," Sullivan replied when I asked for exactly that. "It wasn't very good, obviously. And our players knew it. I told them that between periods. 'We've got to have a will to win here. We've got to be a hungry team.' For whatever reason, we didn't have it in the first period. I thought we responded. In the second period, there were some momentum swings. I thought the special teams really stood out there."
You bet. Two power-play goals, a shorty and a couple kills.
"I thought we were real good after that," he continued. "But we can't rely on that to get us into a hockey game. We've got to be able to play a full 60. The first period certainly wasn't how we want to play."
I asked Blueger this, too.
"I don't know," came the response after a hesitation. "It's a good question."
So good I'll try it yet again: What happened? And why?
How did the team flying all over the ice in Philadelphia, then bouncing back from two tough losses to take the Capitals here Sunday, suddenly fail to show up at all until a few oddities splashed water in the face?
Here's my theory: The top six, exempting Crosby, have stunk at five-on-five.
Crosby's winner was his third goal in four games, and he's been forced to create most of his own offense with Jake Guentzel still lagging and with Kasperi Kapanen kept from making his debut until this game. But let the record show that his next five-on-five point will be his first.
Malkin's been so much less, with no five-on-five points, seven total shots, zero penalties drawn and, for the analytically inclined, a team-worst Corsi For percentage of 43.02%, meaning that, when he's on the ice, opponents have generated 49 shot attempts to the Penguins' 37.
The wingers fall in line, as well: Guentzel, Jason Zucker and Bryan Rust have one assist each and 16 total shots combined at five-on-five. The only goal came from first-line fill-in Evan Rodrigues scored accidentally Sunday when a shot caromed off his skate.
And the craziest part?
The Penguins, as a team, have the fifth-best Corsi For percentage in the NHL at 54.48%, underscoring powerfully that the top six are the drag.
And that, if you ask me, is what drags the whole operation down, the way we all witnessed in that first period. Because, ultimately, this team will sink or swim based on how the top six does. Not the power play. Not the PK. Not whatever Mark Jankowski's doing. Not the defense. Not even the goaltending. Same as it's been in Pittsburgh for four decades, this roster's defined by its scorers. They either score or they lose.
So, maybe this one outcome really can become uplifting, even if it won't feel that way now.
Early in the game, this was Malkin with a chance to shoot ...
... and a period later, on the power play, he took this novel approach:
Malkin's always needed a goal to bring his head back down from the clouds. He stops pouting, starts shooting, and all's well.
It's likely, too, that Kapanen will make a difference once he's up on the first line. Sullivan smartly used him on the fourth line for his delayed debut -- a weeklong quarantine and a single team practice preceded this, of course -- but he showed quite well, both in terms of speed and skill. It'll be fun to see how he fits with Crosby and Guentzel.
But this broader script has to change. And soon. There aren't any parachutes for the Penguins if they can't solve a top six that creates next to nothing at even-strength.
Until then ...
"It's an indication of their resilience," Sullivan observed of how this wound up. "It wasn't pretty. We're aware of that. We've got to get better in a whole lot of areas. But we found a way. I give our players a lot of credit in that regard."
He paused a moment.
"Wins like this, I think, they help build the chemistry that's necessary to win in this league. This might be one we look back on and say, 'What a wild game it was.' We certainly didn't play all that great, but we found a way. That's got to be part of our team identity, too. That we fight to the end."
• Sullivan had no update on either Pettersson or Riikola, other than to acknowledge both were "upper-body injuries" and that they were "being evaluated." My guess is that, if both remain out, Cody Ceci will be joined by rookie Pierre-Olivier Joseph, Joseph being a lefty and already on the taxi squad.
Taylor Haase has more on this, as well as T.J. Oshie's hit that hurt Pettersson, in a separate piece.
• Oshie's hit wasn't interference, as it was called, and it was delivered shoulder-to-shoulder. But blindside checks are illegal, whether to the head or not, and the NHL's hilariously named Department of Player Safety should at least pretend to weigh further punishment. If everyone starts running around disrespecting opponents this way, body bags will be needed.
• Anyone remember when we were all fretting over how to manage nine defensemen? There's always, always, always attrition at the position.
• Loved this zone entry by Guentzel on Crosby's winner:
I asked Crosby how much zone entries mean in three-on-three, as well as how much Guentzel's meant.
"They mean a lot," the captain came back. "A lot of teams are trying to stand you up at the line, and Jake made a great play to chip the puck to himself, create some time and space, then find Tanger there."
Kris Letang with the shot.
"Possession's huge, three-on-three, wearing teams down," Crosby concluded. "And we've done a good job now in both of the overtimes we've had of gaining the zone like that."
• Kapanen's debut saw him record a sharp assist in the first period, breezing half the length of the rink to zip a wrister that set up a rebound smack-in for Colton Sceviour:
Not bad for fresh out of lockdown, huh?
"It's not easy," Sullivan said of what Kapanen had to do. "We didn't want to put him in a difficult circumstance, which is why he started on the fourth line, got some time on Sid's line, some on Geno's line. We're going to have to find creative ways to get him up to speed, but I thought he played pretty well. You could see his explosive skating. He handles the puck well, he's a playmaker, good shot ... we just have to put him in a position to succeed."
I caught Kapanen more than once appearing gassed on his way back to the bench, as if to justify Sullivan's patience. But I also won't be surprised to see him bumped up Friday.
Kapanen's take on finally wearing the sweater of the team that drafted him ... all of seven years later?
"It felt good," he'd say. "It was a long time ago, obviously, that I was here. And being forced to miss training camp and now finally getting a game in ... it's special. I've waited a long time for it."
• Blueger's goal was just the third scored at three-on-five in franchise history, the other two belonging to Mario Lemieux (Feb. 13, 1988, in Los Angeles) and Matt Cooke (Feb. 18, 2012 in Philadelphia). And it was gorgeous, to watch it develop from overhead.
Alas, it also was a fluke, at least the first portion: Sure, DeSmith did well to clear the puck himself, but know for a fact -- as I'd suspected from watching upstairs -- that he had no clue Blueger was out at center red. I know because I was the buzzkill who asked DeSmith if this looked better than it really was, to which he smiled and answered, "Oh, yeah, definitely. I was just trying to get it down the ice, and Teddy was in the right place at the right time. That just worked out great. It was very lucky. But I'll take it."
• If I'm Sullivan, I'm going back to Tristan Jarry this Friday against the Rangers. It's fair that Sullivan praised DeSmith for "battling hard," but it's not as if he's been some wall -- .871 save percentage in parts of three games -- and enough's enough. This team needs Jarry to be No. 1 to make anything meaningful of this season.
• For the mob that only discusses Letang when he messes up, he logged a game-high 28:10 to help compensate for the lost defensemen, he was on the ice for four Pittsburgh goals and one Washington goal, he set up the winner and -- to dig deeper -- he put forth a fine 56.76 Corsi For percentage despite being directly matched up against Alexander Ovechkin most of the evening.
• Not sure why it's seemed these Capitals are generally accepted to be a playoff shoo-in. To me, in these two games, they looked surprisingly slow, and both of their goaltenders, Ilya Samsonov and now Vitek Vanecek, looked un-surprisingly mediocre. I get that Braden Holtby wasn't at his best last winter, but abandoning a guy who'd meant so much to the franchise at age 31 and signing Henrik Lundqvist -- out for the year after heart surgery -- was questionable at best.
As for this outcome, Peter Laviolette lamented, "I thought the first period was one of our better periods of the year. We shot ourselves in the foot after that."
Eye of the beholder 'n' at.
• This was the first game I've covered in an empty PPG Paints Arena, and it felt every bit as strange as the first ones at PNC Park and Heinz Field. Snapped this pic during the national anthem, sung by Virtual Jeff Jimerson, in hopes of remembering it:

DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS
The Penguins and Capitals stand for Jeff Jimerson's virtual national anthem Tuesday night at PPG Paints Arena.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Boxscore
• Scoreboard
• Standings
• Statistics
• Highlights
THE THREE STARS
As selected at PPG Paints Arena:
1. Sidney Crosby, Penguins
2. Tom Wilson, Capitals
3. Teddy Blueger, Penguins
THE INJURIES
• Zach Aston-Reese underwent left shoulder surgery in August and has been skating with the taxi squad for several days.
• Zach Trotman underwent right knee surgery Jan. 14 and is expected to be out 4-6 weeks
• Mike Matheson is out longer-term with an upper-body injury sustained Jan. 15.
• Repeating from above, Pettersson and Riikola both sustained upper-body injuries in this game, and Sullivan had no further word on their status.
THE LINEUPS
Sullivan’s lines and pairings:
Jake Guentzel-Sidney Crosby-Evan Rodrigues
Jason Zucker-Evgeni Malkin-Bryan Rust
Jared McCann-Mark Jankowski-Brandon Tanev
Colton Sceviour-Teddy Blueger-Kasperi Kapanen
Brian Dumoulin-Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson-John Marino
Juuso Riikola-Chad Ruhwedel
And for Laviolette's Capitals:
Alex Ovechkin-Nicklas Backstrom-Tom Wilson
Jakub Vrana-Evgeny Kuznetsov-Daniel Sprong
Richard Panik-Lars Eller-T.J. Oshie
Carl Hagelin-Nic Dowd-Garnet Hathaway
Dmitry Orlov-John Carlson
Brenden Dillon-Justin Schultz
Zdeno Chara-Nick Jensen
THE SCHEDULE
No practice, no nothing Wednesday. That was announced when the Monday practice was added. The Penguins are scheduled to practice Thursday, 11 a.m., in Cranberry, then face off against the Rangers here Friday, 7:08 p.m.
THE CONTENT
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