A lack of a sense of urgency? A lack of passion? A lack of energy?
At least for one night, the Penguins emphatically answered all the criticisms levied against them the last few weeks.
The Penguins will gladly take the two points they squeezed from the Blue Jackets in a 3-2 shootout victory on Thursday, but how they got them, especially after having lost five of their previous seven games, might have more lasting impact.
"I thought that's as good as it's been this year for us," Mike Sullivan said of his team's compete level, "and I think that's when we play at our best."
Indeed, this was a cathartic blood-letting, literally and figuratively.
It started just five minutes into the first period, when Ryan Reaves fought Lukas Sedlak and bludgeoned him with a series of blistering rights. Sedlak, who earlier tried to hit Reaves (bad idea) ...
... might have martyred himself in the name of Columbus, but that one-sided fight only served as the undercard at PPG Paints Arena, which roared its approval in a playoff-like atmosphere.
The final 29 seconds of the second period -- which featured a rare Evgeni Malkin bout against Nick Foligno, followed by Sidney Crosby wrestling with Seth Jones -- was exactly what the Penguins needed. The team that fights together, wins together.
"It's Columbus. It's no surprise. It started a long time ago. We hate each other," said Malkin, who took umbrage with Boone Jenner's crosscheck -- called a game misconduct -- to Jake Guentzel's throat. "It's fine. We understand it's a tough game."
Malkin says he works out every day -- "We tough guys, too," he said of himself and Crosby with a laugh -- but it's not every day that the Russian superstar engages in fisticuffs. It was just the eighth time in Malkin's career that he received a fighting major. But the fact that he is willing to do so earned him the respect of his teammates.
No broken hands, no foul, said Kris Letang of the Penguins' unlikely combatants:
"I think our bench got juiced and our team," Letang said. "I think that's what we needed: Guys that don't really, are not really well known for that type of stuff. When you have those guys doing those little details it gets all the guys jacked up."
Obviously, the Penguins don't want Crosby, Malkin or Letang dropping the gloves on a regular basis, but as the defenseman said: "Sometimes, it's going to happen. It's just the way hockey goes."
The Penguins now have seven fighting majors this season, just five fewer than all of last season, but Malkin's scrap with Foligno was the first that involved someone not named Ryan Reaves, according to HockeyFights.com.
"It's not every game," Malkin said. "It's one game. It's fine."
Now comes the hard part for the Penguins: Sustaining the momentum gained by Thursday's emotional victory.
"I'm hoping that we can build on this and use it, certainly from a confidence standpoint and also just from a mindset standpoint of making sure that we bring the necessary passion, night in and night out," Sullivan said.
1. Like old times for Kris Letang.
This week the NHL sent out a video promoting the upcoming 10th anniversary of the first Winter Classic between the Penguins and Sabres. In it you'll see a 20-year-old Letang, sans visor, in just his 28th career game, beating Ryan Miller with a backhand shot in a snowy shootout.
Fast-forward a decade later and Letang is still adept at the shootout even if he doesn't get many opportunities nowadays.
Letang is now 19 of 56 on shootout attempts after beating Sergei Bobrovsky with this backhand-forehand deke that completely fooled the two-time Vezina winner. Heeding the advice of Crosby, Letang patiently waited out Bobrovsky before depositing the puck softly into the net for the winner in the fourth round:
"I kind of threw a couple moves at him and he didn't move," Letang said. "I knew if I kept dragging the puck further, he would be deeper."
Between 2008-12, Letang converted on 11 of 40 attempts, including the Winter Classic. But he's even better at it with age. Over the last four seasons, he is now 8-of-16 (50 percent).
But the advent of the 3-on-3 overtime format at the start of the 2015-16 season has made shootouts a rarity in today's game. About 80 percent of games last season ended in the 3-on-3 overtime.
"It's exciting, I like it," Letang said. "I hope they never get rid of it."
Sullivan said teams still prepare for shootouts, just not as much as they did when they were first introduced following the lockout in the 2005-06 season.
"A big part of the shootouts is just the high-stakes environment. The pressure is hard to simulate in practice. But the guys who are good at it, they handle that well."
2. The power play comes through in the clutch.
If you thought this season has been a struggle for the Penguins, imagine where they'd be without the power play.
The Penguins boast the NHL's fourth-best power play (24.2 percent) but even that went into a tailspin during their disappointing western road trip. On 10 power play opportunities against Vegas, Arizona and Colorado, the Penguins had zero goals on just 10 shots.
Thursday, when they needed it most, the Penguins cashed in. And, most impressively, they ended that dry spell without Crosby and Malkin, 40 percent of their No.1 unit, who were both sitting in the box following the melees at the end of the second period.
After missing the Avalanche game with an upper body injury, Patric Hornqvist scored his team-leading seventh power play goal on this tip of a Phil Kessel shot to tie the game at 2:25 of the third:
"It's fun when everyone contributes to a nice team win," Letang said.
With Columbus shorthanded for a faceoff violation (more on that below), the Penguins power play struck again at 15:03 of the third to take a short-lived 2-1 lead. Here, Malkin batted a rebound of a Crosby shot out of mid-air and put it under Bobrovsky's arm on a 4-on-3 opportunity.
While none of the Penguins' power play goals were of the highlight-reel variety, they were exactly the kinds of shots that Sullivan said were missing when he ripped into his team after Monday's loss in Denver. Both goals were textbook examples of getting pucks on net with traffic. In all, the Penguins went 2 for 5 on the power play while getting off nine shots on goal.
3. Somewhere, Tony Corrente is laughing.
What's up with Pittsburgh and bad officiating lately?
You might recall that Corrente is the NFL referee who officiated last week's Steelers-Patriots "survive the ground" fiasco. No one in Pittsburgh is about to let Corrente off the hook for that game, but at least he's got some company in the bad officiating department.
Veteran ref Wes McCauley and crew absolutely butchered two game-changing calls Thursday, including a "hook" on Conor Sheary at 9:35 of the third where Sheary's stick never actually touched Pierre-Luc Dubois.
The Penguins successfully killed off that penalty but, this being the NHL, you had to know a makeup call was upcoming. And to the surprise of no one, Columbus was slapped with a rare -- even rarer in the final five minutes of what was a 1-1 tie -- faceoff violation on Artemi Panarin at 14:46. If you watched an NHL preseason game this year, you'll remember that the league had been cracking down on players not getting set in the dot.
That dubious call led to Malkin's 4-on-3 power play goal and, for a fleeting moment, it was almost enough to make one feel sorry for John Tortorella. Almost.
"It's the rule, it's a rule," Torts said. "So the teams can't decide the games. Other people decide the games. It's the rule. They made the right call, but it's frustrating that we just don't let the guys who are supposed to put on the show, put on the show."
4. Jamie Oleksiak's a hit in his Pittsburgh debut.
At 6-foot-7 and 255 pounds, it's kind of hard to miss the Penguins new defenseman. In his Pittsburgh debut, Oleksiak announced his presence with some authority, throwing a team-high five hits in 17:26 of ice time, which included 2:24 on the second power play unit.
"I thought he had a real good game," Sullivan said when I asked of his assessment in the video below. "I think he's imposing with his size. He hits really hard. I don't think he realizes how strong he is."
Sullivan revealed that Oleksiak, acquired Tuesday from Dallas in exchange for a 2019 conditional fourth-round pick, had been on the Penguins radar since last summer.
"There's a lot of guys in our hockey ops department that believe he can play the type of game we are trying to play here in Pittsburgh," Sullivan said. "We're excited to have him. He's a real good kid. I think he's really excited to be part of the Penguins and I think his first game was really strong."
There is nothing flashy about Oleksiak's game, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. If nothing else, he didn't take any penalties, though his Corsi For percentage (42.3) was second-lowest on the Penguins. Oleksiak, who turned 25 on Thursday, can skate well for a big man and can move the puck.
5. Let's do this again.
If familiarity breeds contempt, we should be in for a treat when the Penguins and Blue Jackets renew hostilities in just six days. In a bit of a scheduling quirk, the Penguins will also host the Blue Jackets next Wednesday at PPG Paints Arena in the first game after the three-day Christmas break.
That will be the second of four meetings between these rivals, but one can't help but get the feeling that the Penguins and Blue Jackets might meet again sometime in, say, late April.
Though the Penguins have won both of the previous two playoff matchups, be careful what you wish for. Columbus remains a big team, playing a heavy game that tries to pound opposing defensemen on the forecheck.
"The way they play, they're intense guys," Letang said. "They go to the net. They play, I wouldn't say a dirty game, but a hard game. They go in there, they're not afraid of the scrums and stuff like that. When you have a team that brings that game, you have to match up and go after it. It always makes it a pretty good game."
And then there is Columbus' off-season acquisition of Panarin from Chicago. There had been a thought that Panarin couldn't thrive without Patrick Kane on his wing. Well, it hasn't quite turned out that way.
Panarin leads the Coats in assists (22) and points (29) after recording a goal and assist on Thursday. All you need to know about Panarin's playmaking is this Dubois goal that opened the scoring at 7:09 of the first:
Panarin gets his own rebound and then no-looks a backhand to DuBois, who beats Matt Murray high glove side.
The addition of a dynamic offensive player like Panarin gives Columbus a different dimension and makes the Blue Jackets a legit threat to come out of the Eastern Conference.
"I don't know how many scoring chances he had through the game, but I think he was involved in 8o percent of them," Tortorella said. "He was that good. I'll leave it at that."
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
[caption id="attachment_511302" align="aligncenter" width="1000"]
Penguins vs. Blue Jackets, PPG Paints Arena, Dec. 21, 2017. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS[/caption]
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