Kovacevic: Penguins face hard climb to get back to Avalanche's high taken in Downtown (DK's 10 Takes)

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Jack Johnson, formerly of the Penguins, takes his turn in the Avalanche's Stanley Cup handoff Sunday night in Tampa, Fla.

The superstar forward Nate MacKinnon scored, the generational defenseman Cale Makar soared, the captain Gabe Landeskog skated with the Stanley Cup held high, the one and only Jack Johnson took a handoff for his own emotional turn, and the Avalanche dethroned the two-time defending champion Lightning in Game 6 of the Final, 2-1, on a special Sunday night for the sport of hockey in Tampa, Fla.

Which raised, for me, mostly this one question, if I'm being honest: When does our city get to have even a fraction of all that fun again?

Yeah, I know it's been only five years since Nashville, only six since San Jose, and that Pittsburgh's fans have been spoiled beyond belief pretty much every day since poor Pete Peeters became a permanent highlight that one night in Boston:

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Never gets old, does it?

Well, neither does winning it all. For anyone anywhere. That couldn't have been more apparent for this Colorado team, which celebrated exactly how anyone would expect for a franchise that, only five years ago, was dead-last in the NHL's overall standings with five of these same players. Same for the Bolts, who'd been this close to an unprecedented three-peat in the salary cap era, but who reacted afterward as if they'd never won a blessed thing.

It's precious. Every opportunity.

Ask Jack, one of the finest humans I've covered in any sport, how it felt after 17 NHL seasons, 1,024 games and ample personal adversity along the way.

"It was everything I thought it'd be," he'd tell reporters later with that familiar smile he'd flash here in any setting. "Pretty incredible."

The full 60 met that standard, actually:

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For the local franchise, of course, there've been four consecutive first-round failures since the Penguins' own dethroning by that even-more-now excruciating Evgeny Kuznetsov breakaway in 2018. And all four took on all forms: The Islanders smothered them. The Canadiens stunned them. The Islanders seized upon a jittery Tristan Jarry. The Rangers overcame a 3-1 deficit -- along with several other deficits -- principally because the Penguins were reduced to AHL goaltending for most of the series.

Similarly, and maybe as a result, such variance applies to potential solutions, as well.

Blow up the Core?

Wow, no. That'd be an emotional reaction and nothing more, if only because this critical context is everything: For as long as Sidney Crosby's here -- and he pledged after the season to play out "at least" the three years still on his contract -- Ron Hextall's goal is another Cup. I'm not guessing at that, either. He told me that on a trip to Toronto early in the 2021-22 season, and everything I've heard since the sale to the Fenway Sports Group suggests Tom Werner and crew are wholly in line with this. And keeping Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang, setting aside all sentimentality, makes too much hockey sense to ignore. No one who can replace them would be affordable.

But overpay for the Core?

Wow, no to that, as well. Malkin made $9.5 million, and he'll have to come way down, given his recent injury absences. Letang made $7.25 million and, while he's worth every penny of that moving forward, a raise is pushing the reality. Both are 35. Both say they want to stay, and they've both got to back it up?

Keep things as they were?

A hard no here, too. Move a defenseman. Move two. There's no longer a justification for preserving the NHL's highest-paid defense corps. Not after they were unable to nullify the goaltending and do their part in holding leads in Games 5, 6 and 7 against the Rangers. Trade Marcus Pettersson and/or John Marino to open up roughly $8 million in cap space. Apply that money toward the Core and toward Rickard Rakell., exactly the right winger that's needed to have a strong top-six. From there, give opportunities on the blue line -- at long last -- to P.O Joseph, in addition to a greater role for Mark Friedman.

Oh, and not to be forgotten, Jarry must be signed to a long-term extension. He's an unrestricted free agent after next season, and there's no way a franchise goaltender -- which I firmly believe he'll be -- can enter a walk year unsigned.

All this seem implausible? Impossible?

Maybe it is. Maybe Sid and Geno won't be point-a-game guys anymore, even though they still are. Maybe the most complete season of Letang's career just now will have been a last gasp. Maybe Jarry will regress. Maybe the lack of young help on the way -- or Mike Sullivan's unwillingness to use it even if it's there -- will stunt any second wave.

But sorry to the skeptics, I don't see this scene as hopeless. Unlikely, sure. But that's how all championships feel until they're attained.

Let's see how the coming months unfold, beginning in earnest on the floor of the NHL Draft in Montreal next week, and who/what shows up in Cranberry. I believe the raw material, the most challenging building bricks to find, could be in place, albeit with the right maneuvering. I further believe an infusion of youth is feasible, again with the right maneuvering.

Get to work. Summer's upon us, and hope fades with every day that anyone wearing three rings could be lost.

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The Avalanche's Artturi Lehkonen fires the Cup-winning past the Lightning's Andrei Vasilevskiy in the second period Sunday night in Tampa, Fla.

• Man, what a team. The Avalanche was my preseason pick to win it all, but then, they were almost everyone's. For a reason: They're that deep, that dynamic, that they made the Lightning's massive edge in goal -- usually the dominant factor in a Final -- mostly moot. MacKinnon, Makar, Landeskog ... their best players were their best players with few exceptions, and the supporting cast came through with significant, consistent contributions, not least of whom was Artturi Lehkonen with the eventual winner pulverized past Vasilevskiy.

They'd go 16-4 in the playoffs, they'd never face elimination, and they'd battle back 10 times within individual games, the most for any team in the final since the 2009 Penguins kept falling behind all those Hall of Fame Red Wings.

There aren't enough stick taps for their achievement.

• Newspapers still do this best:

• MacKinnon was minutes removed from his initial lap with the Cup when, upon being interviewed by ABC, he unsolicitedly told the tale of how he'd been booked into Room 1787 of his Tampa hotel, and how he'd seen that as a sign of victory given his friendship with Sid. Both are natives of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, they're training partners each offseason, and they've even done an awesome TV commercial together:

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"Love Sid," he'd add.

Later, he made clear Sid needs to return a favor this summer:

• The response was predictably reciprocal, with Sid emailing this afterward to Canadian reporters: “I'm really happy for Nate. I know how much it means to him and his family. I've seen how hard he’s worked to achieve this, and I'm glad that he got rewarded and gets to experience everything that comes with winning. It’s special.”

• I'm not much into comparing champions, but the Lightning's 11 consecutive series victories rates No. 1 in the cap era, surpassing the Penguins' nine in a row through 2016 and 2017, though I'll attach this asterisk: The 2018 Penguins, just like this Tampa Bay team, lost to the eventual champion in being beaten by the Capitals in the second round. And those Washington players have repeatedly stated the Penguins were their toughest opponent in that run.

• Makar was eminently deserving of the Conn Smythe with a staggering 29 points in 20 games, as well as of the bulk of the praise heaped upon him from all directions. He was brilliant:

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But, with all due respect, some praise went way over the top, with Bobby Orr being casually cited far too often for my liking. Orr was before my time, but he's universally regarded as the most revolutionary player in hockey history, on top of being among the top three on almost every list, No. 1 on some. 

Look, the best defenseman I've seen in my lifetime was Nicklas Lidstrom. He did everything better than everyone at his position, and he did that for a decade and a half in Detroit. Maybe Makar will come into such conversations someday, but that can't realistically come soon.

• Always worth a note when he comes up: While in Philadelphia, Hextall overruled his scouts' consensus to bypass Makar in favor of big-time bust Nolan Patrick in the 2017 NHL Draft, and Bobby Clarke blasted him for it back in January:

• Hockey's fledgling analytics community, which is still so desperate for data that's more precise than the simple extrapolation of shots, has long made Jack its whipping boy, citing him ad nauseam in referencing anything negative. They went after Joe Sakic, too, for being stupid enough to sign him.

Back to the Corsi board, I suppose.

• Anyone choosing to rip Jim Rutherford for Jack's remaining cap hit in Pittsburgh -- $1.9 million in 2022-23, plus $917,000 each of three additional three seasons -- is obviously standing on solid ice. But better bring this up in the same breath: Jim also signed Jake Guentzel and Bryan Rust to contracts that've had them way undervalued the past five seasons, by a margin that dwarfs the Jack figures.

No one mentions those, though.

• Wonderful to see the caliber of both teams in this Final. No team should advance this far in the way the Rangers tried through Jacob Trouba. Filthy player, filthy approach, filthy coach in Gerard Gallant.

• I can't even joke about Gary Bettman being unable to partake in the Cup ceremony -- Bill Daly took his place -- since he came down with COVID, he's 70 years old, and that's still a serious matter for seniors. I'll just wish him well ... and hope that he stays healthy enough to retire soon.

• Apropos of nothing and yet always worth a reminder at this special time of year:

It's possible that no franchise in the history of organized sport has achieved less with more. Not even an appearance in the Final since 1967, when the NHL was an actual garage league with a half-dozen teams.

Taylor Haase and I will fly up to Montreal for the draft, and Danny Shirey will write up daily Drive to the Net breakdowns on each pick. It'll be unlike any coverage we've offered of this event.

In the interim, expect a steady stream of content from our hockey staff through the coming week.

• If anyone of this causes some nostalgia, my original columns from the scenes of the 2016 and 2017 championships were fully recreated and published anew to share here. They'd been missing a bunch of pieces because of our many data migrations over the years. Thanks to our Zachary Smith and Eddie Provident for their help with these.

• Thanks for reading!

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