Kovacevic: Whatever approach the Penguins adopt now, it needs to stick

TAMPA, Fla. -- "We have to do it with 23 guys, as a team, and we have to battle. And if we play a nice, structured game, we'll be fine."

This was Kris Letang the other day. I'd asked him about the Penguins' approach to opening this 2021-22 NHL season, which they'll do here tonight against the Lightning, 7:38 p.m. at Amalie Arena, without Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. And that's part of the answer he gave. That they'd need everyone. That they'd need every effort. And that they'd need, within that, extraordinary discipline.

He's right, of course. And not just because of the absent superstars. Or the Bolts being two-time defending Stanley Cup champions. Or the Panthers, their next opponent Thursday across Alligator Alley, also being an Eastern power.

No, he's right primarily because ... well, if we're being real, this is how it needs to be on a permanent basis.

But are we being real yet?

Infinitely more important, are they?

I asked the head coach, too, about the Penguins' approach minus the absent superstars.

"If we're going to have success, we're going to have to play a stingy game," Mike Sullivan began his response. "It's going to take a collective effort. And attention to detail. With some of the game-breakers who aren't in our lineup right now, we can't look to those guys to be the difference. We have to build a team game that's going to give us the best chance to be successful."

Elaborating, as if that was necessary after he's told the same tale countless other times when Crosby and/or Malkin went down, he added, "It's about playing the game the right way. Making good decisions. Being strong on the puck. Being on the right side of the puck. Winning the puck battles. The wall play. The net-front play. All of those little things add up to winning. That's the type of game we'll have to develop."

Note the future tense. In reference to something that, with all due respect to all that Sullivan and the Penguins have achieved in his half-decade tenure, should've been in the past tense ... well, three first-round playoff exits ago.

And that, to me, broaches the realest of all real questions facing this franchise at this apparent pivoting point in its history: Have all concerned accepted that "playing the game the right way" can no longer be the lever that gets pulled in an emergency, only to be abandoned once the superstars return?

That it won't just go into another gradual fade?

That these superstars, again with all due respect, are now delivering diminished returns and can't be burdened with the heaviest lifting anymore?

If so, there's hope for this season. And I mean that.

Show me a roster that's counting on superstars in their mid-30s to be central figures in a lengthy playoff push, and I'll show you Islanders in four, Habs in four, Islanders in six. But show me a roster that's got Letang's ideal 23 guys, as a team, battling and staying structured, then sprinkle in a couple pleasant surprises, and I'll show you a fighting chance.

Know what I'll show you, actually?

The Penguins of this past April and May.

It's easy to forget amid Tristan Jarry's playoff follies, but this was a terrific overall stretch. They finished the regular season with a 13-3-1 surge, finished atop a division few expected them to take, and finished ... yeah, with another first-round exit, but they palpably outplayed the Islanders in every facet but one. Not by a big margin, but by enough that they'd have advanced with goaltending that'd been anywhere above a catastrophic grade.

"We had a really good hockey team," as Zach Aston-Reese told me recently. "We felt like we were going to make a run."

They achieved that partly through Jeff Carter's Bobby Hull-like burst onto the scene, but much more through how everything and everyone fit together and, on top of that, how that fit with a clear embrace of Sullivan's system. They saw that it fed off their speed, skill and smarts, and they interwove it into their collective hockey DNA. It was a hell of a thing to watch.

It's not unattainable this season. 

Of the 23-man roster the Penguins submitted to the league office yesterday afternoon, 20 were part of that playoff team. Gone from the list were Jared McCann, Brandon Tanev and Cody Ceci. New were Brock McGinn, Danton Heinen and Dominik Simon. Those aren't swaps I'd have made, even in an expansion draft context, and I've been critical of Ron Hextall all summer over it. But I'll also acknowledge that all three of the newcomers fared well in this camp -- most surprisingly, Heinen, the acquisition I'd liked least -- and camp also saw encouraging progress from Drew O'Connor, Radim Zohorna, P.O Joseph and Nathan Legare, offering guarded hope for an infusion of youth. Especially O'Connor.

Once this system's put in place on a permanent basis, the kind that no superstar can supersede, there'll be hope for this season. And I mean that.

Why?

Because ZAR was dead-on when he added to his above remark, "And we still have that. We still have a really good hockey team."

• We wouldn't be talking about the Penguins if we wouldn't be referencing even greater challenges on game day.

Mike Matheson left the morning skate today halfway through the session with what Sullivan would call "a lingering lower-body issue," and he won't play tonight. So not even the defense corps can enter the season at full capacity, as Mark Friedman will now suit up. That sure doesn't help. Friedman and Chad Ruhwedel will now be the third pairing, with Friedman sliding across to his off-side. Marcus Pettersson will bump up to the second pair alongside John Marino, and they're at least familiar with each other.

Even so, there was a welcome air of ... defiance after the skate, and I kind of liked that.

Listen to this exchange I had with Sullivan today, underscoring the part at the end where he speaks about facing this opponent:

"We can beat any team in this league," he said.

Guess we'll find out right away.

• It's rare for any opponent to be on the ice for a banner-raising ceremony, and I'm expecting the Penguins won't be an exception. Still, Sullivan conceded it'll have an impact being in the same building.

"I hope that being part of another team's banner-raising is going motivate and inspire us to want to do it again," he said. I"t's certainly going to bring back emotions from my standpoint, and how good that feeling is when we were able to do it."

In almost the same breath, he recalled how hard it was to have his Penguins focused on those occasions.

"It's all we talked about as a coaching staff the couple days before those games. You want to appreciate it, but you've got to be ready for the task at hand. It's a challenge."

I'm sharing mostly because I'm impressed he answered the Tampa reporters' questions on this at all. He easily could've deferred to a focus on his own team.

• Good to see Sid, Jake Guentzel and ZAR skating after the regular group, but don't expect them on this trip. Sid's acknowledged he's "a week or two away," and Sullivan strongly suggested Guentzel will need time since this was only "his second day of skating" of any kind since his COVID stint. He was asymptomatic throughout, but he also had to stay away from ice.

• To rebuild or recharge?

That answer's already arrived in the form of Hextall's multiple public acknowledgements of seeking multiyear extensions for Letang and Malkin. So there isn't a debate as to whether a rebuild will happen anytime soon, though there could easily be one over whether it should.

My stance on this is simple: Crosby should never take a single shift in a rebuild. Not just on principle but because it'd make no hockey sense. Keep the draft picks, keep the development chain moving, and maybe more O'Connors will make it in time to make a difference.

Also, as an addendum and affirming what's above: The Core can still get it done. Crosby, Malkin and Letang are all still top-shelf players in the NHL, and they're all here, remember, at exceptionally affordable rates. Disbanding them only seems logical if any one of them is doing something to disrupt the process.

Such as, say, not adhering to the system.

And yeah, absolutely, I'm targeting Malkin as an individual with that, but it's not that simple. We've also witnessed times when the return of Crosby and/or Letang would result in the rest of the team resuming bad habits.

There just can't be exceptions anymore.

• Miss ESPN's much-touted interview with Sid?

Here's the whole thing ...

... but know that you're watching it the way everyone was forced to watch it. The network scheduled it to air at halftime of Ravens vs. Colts on 'Monday Night Football,' but Jon Gruden being a scumbag qualified as breaking news, and Sid was booted onto a YouTube channel.

• That said, it's good for the NHL, I'm sure, to be on ESPN, if only because the network's got people who understand that sports need to market their stars. I'm not much into TV or the voices and personalities and so forth, but I've already seen, heard and read more about a plan to promote Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Connor McDavid and other individuals in one month than I can recall over the past 10 years.

• That'll begin here, by the way. National TV for the NHL, its marquee American franchise against the one that's been the most successful of late.

Between that and the environment here in downtown Tampa, where the buildings and billboards feature just as much Bolts as they do Tom Brady, the banner-raising tonight, the opener itself ... it's really cool to be covering this. Taylor Haase and I will have everything you'd need on our live file, beginning with the morning skate.

Thanks for reading, as always. (I mean that, too!)