Kovacevic: Geno's 500th goal, Sid's 1,600th point, an unforgettable night ... and with a few small moves, so much more still could be had taken at PPG Paints Arena (DK'S COLUMNS)

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Evgeni Malkin beats the Sabres' Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen for his 500th NHL goal Wednesday night at PPG Paints Arena.

DK'S COLUMNS

Kovacevic: Geno's 500th goal, Sid's 1,600th point, an unforgettable night ... and with a few small moves, so much more still could be had

By Dejan Kovacevic

Oct 17, 2024 β€’ 5:15 am

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β€œIt’s a great story," Evgeni Malkin was musing, in his own inimitable way, at his locker stall late Wednesday night at PPG Paints Arena.

And he'd have been accurate in every way, except that he and the Penguins, in ultimately upending the Sabres, 6-5 in overtime, probably produced, at minimum three great stories:

β€’ His own 500th NHL goal:

β€’ Sidney Crosby's 1,600th NHL point:

β€’ Sid winning it, and in trademark style:

And as such, I've written separate columns on Geno's milestone and Sid's milestone, each event very much meriting its own headline.

But I'm also offering this column, unapologetically, to share a small slice of unsolicited advice to everyone currently associated with this most blessed of franchises: Don't blow this.

Meaning, of course, this:

PENGUINS

I've known and covered these two for the better part of two decades, through their highest of highs and lowest of lows, through three shared Stanley Cup championships and tons of individual trophies and, yeah, through these past six springs without winning a single playoff series, the past two without qualifying at all.

I'd like to think I know when they're driven, and I'd like to think I know what drives them.

After the handful of minutes it took for the crowd of 15,644 to come down from the full crescendo of Geno's 500th, the scoreboard camera showed him seated at the far end of the home bench with his smile all but erased. Even once he sneaked a glance up there to see himself and hear the crowd yet again roar, he had no reaction.

Why?

β€œI don’t care if I not score tonight," was how he worded it. "I want to win."

Yep. and 16 minutes, 34 seconds had still separated the Penguins, now leading, 4-3, from stealing two points. Which, with how they'd performed to that point in conceding countless odd-man breaks to the Sabres in the first 30 or so minutes, wasn't exactly a safe space.

"Tonight was not a perfect game," Geno would say. "But we talked in the locker room, we tried to push everybody and it worked because in the third period, we played so much better."

That began midway through the second, actually, on big-time goals by Drew O'Connor and Jesse Puljujarvi for a 3-3 tie, but he's hardly wrong in that the defending became far more diligent in the third.

Regardless, as Kevin Hayes would tell me, with no shortage of unintended irony, "That's definitely a game we'd want to forget about. We took the two points, so that's really all that matters ... but yeah, we don't want to be giving up odd-mans like that. I'm sure we'll meet as a team, watch some film, and figure out what went wrong there."

Nope. Hadn't happened at all on the 2-1 road trip through Detroit, Toronto and Montreal, so no excuse for it here.

Hayes would continue, "Look around in here. There are elite players in this locker room. It's a good team. All four lines, I think, can chip in every night. And when we're at our best, all of us, we're all over the other team and we're not giving up rushes like that. And I think going forward, we won't be."

Awesome. Loved that.

"We can do so much better than that," Lars Eller would tell me. "And we know that."

He then raised an eyebrow, paused a bit as he tends to do when he's about to say something even smarter than his norm and added, "But I'll tell you this: It's a different team. This isn't last year. We're hitting some tough spots, but we're still coming out on top."

Loved that all the more. Happened in Detroit, Montreal and now this one.

Sid and Geno can still play. It's stunning to me, still, that more people seemingly couldn't see that for themselves last season, amid constant -- and groundless -- complaints advocating breaking up the Core when, in reality, the Core was just about all that was going right. 

These, my friends, were the league's scoring leaders once all games were done on this night:

NHL

Geno and Sid, the former with a goal and three assists here, the latter with a goal and two assists, are both in the technical top 10, with Geno leaping into the lead and Sid now one of a dozen players tied for 10th. Geno's 38, Sid's 37, and they're point-a-gamers at their base, still truly special at their peak.

Once more with gusto: Don't blow this.

Which is to say ...

My God, don't make a healthy scratch of the most pleasant "surprise" of camp, as Mike Sullivan had fairly described Puljujarvi for me last week in Detroit before, incredibly, leaving him out of the lineup two nights later in Toronto. 

No, man, just no. Kill that mindset dead. Stomp on it like a lantern fly, then twist the shoe for the bonus squishy sound.

The best players need to play, regardless of where their names might've fit onto a depth chart or line chart in the past, and that goes for this kid, too ...

Whatever was intended by Sullivan and staff in sticking Anthony Beauvillier on Sid's line ... again, no. O'Connor's shown for months now, rewinding back to the final few weeks of last season, that he's top-six material. And specifically, that he can complement Sid and Bryan Rust in a bunch of ways, not least of which is shooting the hockey puck as seen above.

Which he does need to do, as I playfully reminded him afterward:


Comes complete with sense of humor.

More, please. Sid's got two even-strength points through six games. O'Connor's forecheck alone can boost that.

But less, please, of this guy ...

Goals on the first two shots. A third on the sixth shot. Less-than-inspired efforts on all of them.

Tristan Jarry's been pulled in four of his past 10 starts going back to last season, and he's given up 12 goals on 72 shots this season for an .833 save percentage that a fire hydrant could've matched with similar ice time. And yet, he just keeps shoved back out there, as if he's still a prospect or understudy, as if he's some blossoming gem who just needs a little more grooming.

I get it: The contract's awful at five years and $26.9 million, and no one's going to take that off the Penguins' hands with a sizable cash assumption. So, to a degree, they're stuck with him, possibly hoping he'd straighten out just long enough for someone to get stupid for a day.

But I also get this: He doesn't need to play.

And this: When Alex Nedeljkovic returns from his knee injury -- and that'll be soon, since's back on skates -- utilizing Jarry rather than Joel Blomqvist for any significant stretch would be prioritizing all the wrong stuff.

All Blomqvist did after Jarry was booed off the rink was to stop the first 21 shots he saw and finish with 26 saves on 28 shots. One of the Buffalo goals beat him cleanly, and the other changed direction twice on him. And that's really no different than how he's fared overall, now with a 2.86 goals-against average and a .913 save percentage.

What's more, he's 22 and having a blast.

"It's just fun being here," Blomqvist would tell me after this. "It's still hockey, you know? Just like you played your whole life."

Here, too, stop making decisions based on someone's name or, in this case, contract status.

Sullivan's stance on Jarry's latest ... was basically to blame everyone: β€œIt was just a tough start for our whole team, quite honestly. I don’t think it was even close to our best game out there, and we just felt like, given the way the game started, that it was the right thing to make the switch. I think Tristan was a victim of that, to a certain extent, and he was also a part of that to a certain extent."

Uh-huh. He's a part of the games in which the starting goaltender gets pulled, not a part of the games in which the starting goaltender makes it to the final horn.

Can't coddle him anymore. He hasn't earned anything of the kind, to put it mildly.

Play the players who play the best. And do so because the best players, who want to win and can win with the proper support, have continued to earn that.

β€’ Thanks for reading my hockey coverage. Again, I've got separate columns on Geno and on Sid.

β€’ Thanks for listening, too:


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