CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- Carl Hagelin is fast.
He's got thighs like redwoods, a borderline-bowlegged gap in his gait that's strikingly common among hockey's greatest skaters, and he's got a lighter, lithe torso that's sturdy enough for high-level endurance, allowing him to whiz about the rink in a way that looks ... well, far too effortless to have been taught.
"You can't teach that, man. You just can't," Trevor Daley was musing the other day after the Penguins' practice at the Lemieux Complex. "You come out of the womb with that."
That's probably fair, at least to the extent that DNA dictates all of our paths.
But six days ago in Washington, following an uplifting victory over the NHL's No. 1 team, as most of his mates had long since packed up, there was Hagelin in a corridor outside the locker room, riding one of two stationary bikes, with Sidney Crosby on the other.
Then Kris Letang.
Then Oskar Sundqvist, the rookie.
Then ... hey, where'd everyone go?
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