The second-loudest sound inside PPG Paints Arena on this Saturday night, possibly still reverberating through the place, came when the Maple Leafs' Morgan Rielly pinged a shot off the far bar for the prettiest of finishes:
The loudest, of course, came with the cheer that followed.
Hear that?
Yeah, for Toronto. Yikes.
It wound up Leafs 5, Penguins 0, and the score was very much befitting the scope of the event.
"We got outplayed," Mike Sullivan would reply, flatly, dryly, to my question afterward about, well, how they got outplayed. "You've got to play the game right way. We got outplayed tonight."
They really did. In all facets, too, but especially on offense.
Rielly's goal was one of three that were as authoritative as any by an opponent here all season. John Tavares redirected a long-range flick while dashing through the slot, and Patrick Marleau slammed home a net-dislodging backhander off a partial break.
Boom, boom, boom, get out of their way ...
That's what those guys do. Even without Auston Matthews, even despite being burdened by a blah defense corps, the Leafs still have a loaded arsenal up front. And when they skate and shoot in straight lines, as the above goals powerfully illustrate, they're tough to stop.
Funny, but that's how the Penguins looked up in Toronto a couple weeks back, and over the remainder of that 4-0 cross-Canada sweep. They dictated the offensive terms, and they did so primarily by plowing their way from point A to B.
Not so much in this one or, for that matter, through much of the two preceding losses to the Islanders.
Why?
That's the question I put to Carl Hagelin:
The third period was fine. Once the team's leadership had emphasized that whole shortest-path thing in the second intermission, for probably the bazillionth time, the Penguins came out and produced 13 of their 31 shots and most of their best chances, including this Patric Hornqvist clanger off the crossbar:
But by then, it barely mattered. The Leafs had a 3-0 lead through two and could, from there, follow Mike Babcock's pregame directive to simply chip in and chip out, addressing a clearance issue they've had of late.
The first two periods were way different:
It's never easy to criticize Sidney Crosby, but this, to be blunt, has been the biggest difference between his road and home versions in the early going this season. Outside of Pittsburgh, he lowers his shoulder and either lets one fly or backhands a pass through traffic. Here, he dances to the middle. And when he did, one, two, three Leafs converged, and Zach Hyman reached back to stab it away.
The captain would register one shot on the evening and attempt only one other.
To repeat: That's not isolating on him. It's citing an example of a bunch of stuff that went broadly wrong in this regard.
Like this ...
This is all kinds of bad.
To be fair, Phil Kessel led the Penguins with six shots. But on this sequence, after Crosby and Jake Guentzel do well to get the puck back to the left point, Kessel, who'd just jumped over the boards on a partial change, smoothly collected the puck, swirled to face the inside ... and tried a lateral pass across the Toronto blue line to a completely covered Olli Maatta?
Never mind that Crosby and Guentzel were at the end of their shifts and couldn't help if there were a break the other way. It's just ... bad. And it's what this team does far too often when it's off. If Kessel just flicks that toward the net, he's got both Crosby and Guentzel facing him and ready for redirects and rebounds.
One more ...
Crosby cleaned Tavares on this faceoff, banking the puck back to Kris Letang at the right point. Dominik Simon does a lousy job of picking his forward on the inside hash, so Hyman forces Letang to dump it down the boards rather than taking a shot. There's a fine line between picking and interference, but every winger everywhere knows it, and Simon failed to react to a highly visible winning draw. Hyman, by contrast, was shot out of a cannon.
I point this out mostly to underscore how the straight line needs to be made available, too. It isn't just a matter of putting one's head down and shooting everything. All five skaters need to contribute. Simon didn't.
Simon does smartly cover for Jack Johnson on a good pinch by the latter, but the Leafs have won the zone back. They packed the middle and, once the puck makes it around to the other boards, they get it back easily and clear.
I asked Tavares about Toronto's effectiveness at keeping the Penguins to the perimeter.
"Obviously, they're a dangerous team, and they've got the best player of our generation," Tavares answered. "It was important to us to keep their guys outside and let our goalie see the shots because we know he'll stop those. So, to shut them down, with all the firepower they’ve got, it’s a great job by everybody in here."
I also asked Frederik Andersen, who received credit for the 31-save shutout but barely broke a sweat:
No disrespect to Andersen, by the way. It's telling that, when a Toronto reporter sought comment from Babcock on his goaltender's showing the coach replied, "I thought our team did a really good job for him."
The other guys did their part, too.