"Their excitement and their youthful energy, I think, was carried throughout the lineup."
These words were spoken at PPG Paints Arena late Tuesday night. And no, not by the visitors.
"You saw it from the first shift on, they were playing hard, they were playing in-your-face, they were playing with a certain sense of ... I guess ... swagger to them."
Swagger?
I checked the tape. That was the term.
I'll further clarify: This was Bryan Rust. He plays for the Penguins. The Pittsburgh Penguins. And he was glowing about all the younger players who'd just contributed to ... wow, wearing out the Hurricanes, 4-1, by being more physical, more disciplined, more dogged defensively, even -- gasp! -- faster than one of the NHL's fastest collectives and a bona fide Stanley Cup contender.
No, I'm not nuts. And yes, I've got more from this Bizarro realm.
โSome real good positivity and a little bit of excitement," Alex Nedeljkovic would observe after stopping 39 of 40 Carolina shots. "And I don't want to say they're naive, but just that they want to play, they want to do well. And when you're young like that, when you haven't played a lot of games in this league, you want to succeed and you want to show the guys around you that you can do it."
Allow me the license, please, to translate for my fellow Serb: The younger players on this roster weren't about to get caught up in any long-term drama surrounding the team or, for that matter, Jake Guentzel's return on this very night. It's easier to tune out the noise. They just want to play and, ideally, to pursue continued employment.
"They were everywhere," Lars Eller would say. "They did so many little things to help us win puck battles, then keep the puck, then sustain the attack."
His eyebrows went up same time as mine, as if synchronized.
"I know, right?" he'd proceed. "It's encouraging."
Encouraging?
Look, I'm not an idiot. Let's get that out of the way. I've seen the standings. I've seen the 3-9-2 collapse that preceded this, including the blown four-goal lead a couple days earlier in Denver. This edition of this team's as cooked as cooked gets on the tangible front. And for all any of us knows, they'll regress to the lagging, lackluster mean in their next two games even though both will be against the basement-bound Blue Jackets.
But the one feeling I hadn't had regarding almost anything about this franchise, for months now, was hope.
Remember hope?
Yeah, I'll walk out of this building not thinking about Sidney Crosby's three points that gave him seven in his past two games, not Rust's slingshot winner off a Sid draw ...
โ DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) March 27, 2024
... and, respectfully, not anything related to anyone older than 30. Or heck, even anyone older than 25.
Like this kid:
A big goal, a bigger smile ๐ pic.twitter.com/0YOMGgtnNB
โ Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) March 27, 2024
That laser look elite enough?
Jesse Puljujarvi's 25. He's a onetime No. 4 overall pick in the NHL Draft digging his way back from double-hip resurfacing. While this team was dying on the figurative vine through this game-every-other-day March, he's been a healthy scratch eight times. The six times he's suited up, he's got three goals. And in this game, he was nothing less than the most dynamic presence on either side.
See where I'm going?
Maybe not. Just wait:
โ DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) March 27, 2024
That's early in the third period. Protecting a one-goal lead but with a slightly more authoritative posture than the pathetic one in Denver. Had the whole bench up, not to mention the 17,913 on hand, who probably felt as if they hadn't seen anything of the sort since Bob 'Battleship' Kelly.
Jonathan Gruden's 23. He's the Senatorsโ fourth-rounder from 2018, acquired in the Matt Murray trade. He's spent most of the season in Wilkes-Barre, interspersed with five separate stints in Pittsburgh for a total of 13 games. He's seen so much of I-80 that I'll bet he can name every deer in every county in the commonwealth.
Because he had the audacity to crunch Jack Drury with a clean check, he'd be challenged to fight by Stefan Noesen, and he'd more than hold his own there, as well.
And beyond that, as everyone in the room would acknowledge, that's where his peers suddenly starting flexing. Boom. Boom. Boom. Pucks became separated from bodies. Pucks were won. Pucks were supported. Honest-to-Gordie hockey offense ensued.
"Everything started with Gruds' hit," Nedeljkovic would say. "That got all our juices flowing."
In the span of one shift, Gruden achieved a greater impact than the totality of all the various non-Eller thirty-something forwards who'd been acquired to fill the bottom six. And to think, he was right up the road.
Now see where I'm going?
Uh-huh:
โ DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) March 27, 2024
Valtteri Puustinen's 24. He's also 5-9 in stature, but he, too, was throwing around his weight after Gruden's shift, in addition to flashing still more of that skill that seems to multiplying with each passing game, if not each passing shift.
I love the entire shift above. Follow him and no one but him. On the pivotal rush through the neutral zone, he'll chip the puck aerially away from opponents, then begins what'd be an extended possession between him and Eller in the Carolina zone.
Not surprisingly, Eller knew what I was referencing when I raised this.
"Puusty has a great ability to get to pucks," he'd say. "But the biggest thing for me is the confidence he's showing now all over the ice once he gets them."
Saved my favorite for last:
โ DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) March 27, 2024
Big deal, right?
Try it again. Then take note that it's Evgeny Kuznetsov doing his usual dance in a dangerous area. The defense corps we've witnessed all winter would watch him do that all day. Not the rookie who's barely been here a week.
Jack St. Ivany's 24. He's 6-3, 198, and Eller-smart. Maybe he was just being "naive," as Nedeljkovic laid it out, or maybe he just didn't give a flapping wing who Kuznetsov was and, instead, stood him up and sealed him off like a bantam novice.
Should've seen the home bench for that one.
"The whole bench," Rust would say. "We loved it."
Am I forgetting anyone before finally getting the point?
Oh, right:
Stick-to-it-ivenessโข pic.twitter.com/xCSY3E7Laz
โ Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) March 27, 2024
Drew O'Connor's 25. He's on the top line, having taken Jake's place on the Sid line. He does all of the above "every night," as he'd playfully remind me after this game when I brought up other youngsters. But there's no question he's been at his professional peak of late, with two goals and three assists in the past seven games, including an empty-netter here, on top of endless successful forechecks.
His stance on the subject of the day mirrored that of the room.
"We've got some good, young players here, guys who can make things happen, guys who care," he'd tell me. "And that's exciting. That's a fun feeling for all of us."
Mm-hm.
So when criticism gets written or spoken about Mike Sullivan's beyond-maddening favoritism toward veterans, let this serve as the firmest of foundations for it. It's not just that Reilly Smith committed an egregious turnover in the first period that led to a two-on-one and a power play for Carolina, neither with any repercussion. It's not just that Rickard Rakell so infuriated someone in Kyle Dubas' box -- maybe Dubas himself, based on ample precedent -- that vulgarities were echoing all through the press box below. It's not just that the same tired supporting cast, assembled by Dubas with no apparent forethought to age being a factor, continues to operate with no apparent accountability at ice level.
It's that both Dubas and Sullivan, pretty much equally, were responsible for the insanity involved in adding a bunch of old guys to a bunch of old guys and expecting some spanking new result.
It was doubly dumb.
And keeping this real, would anyone have been the least bit surprised on this day if Jeff Carter, who returned from his injury to partake in the morning skate, had played ahead of Sam Poulin, a former first-rounder who'd been promoted from Wilkes-Barre in the morning, or even Puljujarvi or Puustinen?
No?
Me neither.
Taking it further, if Carter, Noel Acciari and Matt Nieto hadn't been hurt, would any of these kids have made the lineup?
No?
Point made.
All that was needed all along to make 2023-24 a season of progress rather than the embarrassment it's been, as I was putting forth as far back as a summer ago, was to concoct a cast of energy creators. Players with some potential -- and Puljujarvi's a fine example, to Dubas' credit -- but who'd also have the fire and the freshness to free up the older guys to do their respective thing without all the excess effort.
Maybe this game'll resonate in that regard. Or the next two. Or the final dozen as a whole.
โข More on Jake's return in the Feed.
โข I'm flying to Miami before sunrise for five days of baseball coverage, beginning with the Pirates' pre-opener workout today at 2 p.m. The opener's tomorrow at 4:10 p.m.
โข Thanks for reading.
โข And for listening:
