CRANBERRY, Pa. -- The puck cruelly bounced over Mike Matheson's waiting blade just inside the attacking blue line, back into the neutral zone and forcing a full retreat.
And this: 'AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!'
It was awesome.
Not necessarily that part, but the part immediately afterward where Matheson raised his stick as if he were about to angrily tomahawk the boards ... then recoiled it and burst into laughter.
At which point so did everyone else.
This was Monday morning at the Penguins' practice inside the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex, a one-day reprieve at home amid a six-game, 11-day road trip that resumes Tuesday night against the Rangers in New York. And already on this morning, the team had learned that it'll be without Brandon Tanev for weeks, that the most recent goaltender they faced has COVID, and that precautionary measures were being heightened around the NHL on that front with nearly the entire Vancouver roster now stricken.
Imagine, now, Matheson and his teammates and his coaches enjoying -- no, visibly embracing -- a lighter moment like the one above, and it's a lot clearer what's making this collective click.
Both in spirit ...
... and in the standings.
It's been fun. And the thing is, it's not done.
I'll admit, when I'm watching these guys now, even in a setting like this, I'm viewing them differently than I did ... wow, even a month ago. They've gotten great -- not good, not very good, but great -- goaltending from Tristan Jarry, who should return Tuesday night, and Casey DeSmith. They've gotten dependable, often dynamic work from the defensemen. And the forwards, despite missing a handful of their top nine, have figured out a way through first-line and power-play production.
Hey, having Sidney Crosby still counts.
No, it really does. And I feel like maybe that gets forgotten around here, where we've been so accustomed for so long to having Crosby and Evgeni Malkin that we presume their output to be a default mode rather than appreciating that it's still the exception around the NHL. They're still the biggest worry for the opponent. They're still special, more often than not, at least after a sluggish first few weeks for both.
Same goes for Kris Letang. I'd argue that he's been steady throughout the season and, since Brian Dumoulin's return to healthy, he's soared above that level. Both ends. All ways.
The Core's still the core.
And yet, as we've seen in the past couple playoffs, as we've probably come to accept, the Core's no longer capable of carrying a championship run. It can be the heartbeat. It can inject that special element. But it's no longer five years ago and Game 6 in San Jose, when all three -- Crosby, Malkin and Letang -- imposed their combined will on the Sharks, who might've had the stronger supporting cast, and rendered all else moot. And this at the conclusion of a brutal two-month drive.
That won't happen again. And I offer that without a tinge of cynicism. Father Time's undefeated even when he goes to a shootout.
Which begs the biggest question of all leading into the NHL's trade deadline April 12, just a half-dozen days away: What will ... or can ... or should Ron Hextall and Brian Burke do about the rest?
Each of those gentlemen has now made clear to DK Pittsburgh Sports, separately and yet in a singular voice, that they'd prefer to add some size and snarl. And it's easy to see why. As Burke reminded us, the last champion to win with a smaller roster was ... the Penguins, in 2017. Since then, it's been a boatload of big and semi-bad: Capitals, Blues and Lightning, all three of whom were better equipped to fend off bumps, bruises, wear and tear on their way to 16 Ws.
Wishing and receiving are very different, though. And for as much credit as Jim Rutherford deserves for his offseason moves that led into this scenario, that's precisely how depleted he left the reserves for his replacements when it comes to trade capital: The Penguins are too close to the cap to pull off any meaningful exchange that doesn't clear out their own cap space, and Hextall's made abundantly -- and rightly -- clear that this organization's in no position to trade draft picks or prospects.
The process starts with evaluating what's within. That's what Hextall and Burke have been doing, in person at games and practices, for two months now. And to date, the only external move they've made was Hextall's waiver claiming of spare-part defenseman Mark Friedman from his previous employers in Philadelphia, so it's safe to say their focus has been on watching and learning.
Funny thing happened along the way, of course: The Penguins were 4-2-1 before Rutherford's exit, kept stumbling to 5-5-1, and they've since gone 19-7-1.
Funnier thing: Although they're currently third in the East Division, they're 4-2 against the first-place Capitals, 6-2 against the second-place Islanders.
Funniest thing, potentially: Very clearly, they can get out of the East in the playoffs, at which point the NHL's final four will be re-seeded. And at which point, as anyone with any knowledge of hockey history will attest, every team's a Cup contender. Confidence calcifies through two rounds. Goaltending gets hot. Unsung heroes emerge. Momentum doesn't care about its next opponent.
Heck, let's take it further: Assume that the three other semifinalists are the Lightning (the Panthers are first in the Central, but losing Aaron Ekblad's a crusher), the Avalanche (who'd beat out maybe the second-best overall team in the league in the Golden Knights), and the Jets (who I'm picking here only because the Leafs are the Leafs and will somehow Leaf up taking the easy North). I'd peg the Penguins as a decided underdog to all of those teams except Winnipeg, but no series victory can be seen as impossible at that stage.
The goal, then, would figure to be bridging that gap from 8 Ws to 16 Ws.
Whipping out the notepad, these are Mike Sullivan's Game 1 combos if everyone's healthy and the roster's unchanged:
Guentzel-Crosby-Rust
McCann-Malkin-Kapanen
Aston-Reese-Blueger-Tanev
Zucker-Gaudreau-Rodrigues
Dumoulin-Letang
Matheson-Ceci
Pettersson-Marino
I'm betting we can agree on most of the forward lines. Jared McCann's earned his way into top-six duty. The Teddy Blueger line's best served when checking the opponent's No. 1 line. Freddy Gaudreau's been too good to ignore. I'm taking Evan Rodrigues over the numerous other options -- Anthony Angello, Sam Lafferty, Colton Sceviour, Mark Jankowski -- because he can kill penalties, he can be Sullivan's only right-handed guy on draws, and he can slide up to top-six in an emergency.
And the defense, obviously, stays untouched.
Is that good enough? Cup-caliber?
Eh, no.
Zucker's neither a fourth-line type nor a penalty-killer, so it feels like he'd just be getting stashed there. So let's put him and his $5.5 million cap hit on the block. He won't be easy to move, since that cap hit applies for two additional seasons, but it'll be worth the attempt. Money matters.
Marcus Pettersson's a better bet. He's got a $4.025 million cap hit this season and all the way through 2024-25, but he's also much younger -- turning 25 in a couple months -- and there's always, always a market for defensemen. He hasn't had the greatest winter for the Penguins, but I'm a big believer in his body of work, which is by now well known through the industry. What's more, there's a more-than-ready replacement in house with P.O Joseph staring at his phone in Wilkes-Barre.
If both can be moved, Hextall can get ambitious in his calls. If it's just one, he'd be limited, in all likelihood, to a swap of similar contracts.
What to seek?
That's equally vexing.
Again, if Zucker goes, it's simplified. Because now two-thirds of the fourth line can be restocked -- around Gaudreau, naturally -- and, in turn, the Penguins can be shaped more toward the Hextall/Burke image. But if Zucker stays, and this process gets reduced to a contract-for-contract swap involving Pettersson, we're surely talking about one player who just might fall into the performance range of Gaudreau, Rodrigues or, if it's size that's the target, Angello.
Yeah. So there's that.
There's time. And the trade activity's barely begun, with the first big domino yet to fall. But conceptually, I've got to tell you, I'd take zero issue with the Penguins not doing a thing.
That wouldn't be popular. Not after seven years of Santa Jim raining down presents onto Pittsburgh rooftops. Heck, going all the way back to Craig Patrick's days, we're accustomed to connecting deadline deals to Cups. But there've been exceptions, too, notably in 2016, when Rutherford unapologetically came away only with a seemingly minor trade with Edmonton ... that brought Justin Schultz. And Schultz only blossomed into a contributor to that Cup, and the team's No. 1 defenseman in Letang's absence for the next Cup.
Something similar could be the play here. The same way Gaudreau wouldn't have gotten his chance if not for multiple injuries, maybe Angello will be force-fed film of the Tkachuk brothers to uncover some snarl of his own. The same way Joseph rocked his rookie debut, maybe he'll again be big on defense when the inevitable playoff injuries happen back there.
All I've got to share with any certainty is this: What's here, in front of my eyes, isn't missing much that's reasonably accessible.