It's not as if Marcus Pettersson and Mark Friedman were total strangers before Saturday night.
After all, they had played together a bit last season, Pettersson said, and they were partners a few times during the Penguins' recent raining camp.
But as the Penguins began to prepare for what would be a 7-1 victory over the Maple Leafs at PPG Paints Arena, the thinking was that Pettersson again would be paired with Chad Ruhwedel, and that Friedman would spend the evening in street clothes.
Those plans -- and pretty much everything else about the Penguins' defense -- changed when Kris Letang tested positive for COVID-19. All three pairings received an overhaul, and Friedman got a spot in the lineup opposite Pettersson.
Mike Sullivan said the coaching staff assembled the pairings -- Brian Dumoulin-John Marino, Mike Matheson-Ruhwedel and Pettersson-Friedman -- "for certain reasons, based on matchups that we were looking for through the course of the night." Whatever the logic, it was hard to argue with the results. Friedman had a very good night, with an assist and a plus-minus rating of plus-5, while Pettersson had one of the finest of his career, finishing with personal bests in points (3) and plus-minus (+5) .
"Marcus is playing with a whole lot of confidence," Sullivan said. "Because of that, his overall game has just improved. His gaps are better. He's making better decisions with the puck. He's more smooth in all aspects of his game."
Pettersson surely was smooth on his goal, which gave the Penguins a 5-1 lead at 13:59 of the second period:
He took a feed from Evan Rodrigues, who was near the bottom of the right circle, and whipped a shot past Toronto goalie Jack Campbell high on the stick side from the left hash mark.
"I didn't really call for (the puck)," Pettersson said. "He just saw me."
Pettersson's goal didn't have much of an impact on the outcome, because the Penguins had seized control of the game by scoring three times earlier in the period.
But even though Toronto's uninspired play for much of the evening clearly helped to shape the final score, the commitment the Penguins showed throughout the game should not be overlooked.
They were missing their top three centers, their first-line right winger and, oh yeah, the cornerstone of their defense.
But as much as the Penguins want to have Letang return -- just as they do Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jeff Carter and Bryan Rust -- Pettersson suggested that whatever personnel combinations Sullivan and his staff cobble together can be effective.
"It doesn't matter who we play with," he said. "We have a system to rely on ... and when you're on the same page, you make each other look good. The whole (defense) corps did it."
The Penguins are just five games into this season, so it is far too early to pass definitive judgment on anything done by an individual or unit. Nonetheless, Pettersson and Marino both seem to be rebounding nicely from a 2020-21 season during which neither performed to expectations for much of the time.
Pettersson is averaging 19 minutes of ice time per game, and his plus-minus of plus-10 is nearly double the second-best on the club. (Friedman, Marino and Drew O'Connor are plus-6.) Plus-minus is a superficial, flawed statistic, but when, after just five games, a player has been on the ice for 10 more even-strength and short-handed goals scored by his team than by its opponents, the number is worth noting.
A few lucky bounces, like having an O'Connor centering pass carom off the skate of Toronto defenseman Jake Muzzin and into the net, have helped to pad Pettersson's but some of those good breaks are by-products of strong play on his part. He is playing at -- or maybe over -- the level the Penguins were hoping for when they acquired him from the Ducks for Daniel Sprong in 2018.
Pettersson's future with the Penguins was the subject of rampant speculation during the past offseason, when talk of possibly exposing him in the expansion draft or trading him seemed incessant, and it's still conceivable that the Penguins would be willing to part with him to address a need elsewhere in their lineup, because they have good organizational depth at left defense.
But Pettersson has shown the level he's capable of reaching through the early weeks of this season and, at 25, should be able to further elevate his game at both ends of the ice.
"Marcus is a very good player when he's playing the game this way," Sullivan said. "We're hopeful that the confidence he's built will help him going forward."
No matter his partner.