“It’s a big night,” Olli Maatta was telling me. And he wasn’t talking about what everyone else is talking about. “I honestly feel like every night is a big night now, but this one’s really big.”
Winning the bleeping game, he meant.
Exorcising everything about that massive mess the other night in Newark.
And they’re being handed a golden opportunity to perform precisely that tonight against Marc-Andre Fleury and his outrageous Golden Knights, 7:08 p.m. at PPG Paints Arena.
“These guys work so hard … always in your face … always on the puck,” Maatta continued. “It’s going to be a big challenge. We’ve got to bring our ‘A’ game. And we’ve got to do it from the start.”
Meaning not at all like the 3-1 loss to the Devils in which they were outshot, 38-16, and outpaced, roughly 1 billion to nil.
“We just didn’t have it. No life. No nothing. And if you think about it, in all this time we’ve been playing well, we’ve been giving a good 60-minute effort. Not there. We didn’t start skating until … what, the third period?”
Yeah. Somewhat.
“That can’t happen again. We have to stop that.”
And to do so, they need to be the very best version of themselves. Maybe the 2016-17 version of themselves. When I’ve watched Vegas, that’s what comes to mind, if only in terms of approach. Gerard Gallant rolls four lines that, as Mike Sullivan noted this morning, “are really balanced from line to line,” and they pursue the puck relentlessly over all 200 feet of the sheet. It’s not artwork as much as it is aggression.
They aren’t 35-13-4 by accident.
“They come at you honestly,” Sullivan said with a legit-sounding admiration. “We’re in for a battle. We need to make sure we’re absolutely invested in the game.”
In the game. That’s priority No. 1.
All concerned answered all the requisite questions this morning about facing Fleury, about the emotions expected to pour from the crowd with the first-period video tribute the Penguins have planned. (Which I’m told, by the way, will involve a little more than the norm.) And Mario Lemieux was on hand, as well, to present Fleury with his third Stanley Cup ring:
Earlier this morning, Marc-Andre Fleury received his 2017 Stanley Cup ring from Mario Lemieux. Congratulations Flower. Well deserved.🌸 pic.twitter.com/bAM4mQ7Cpi
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) February 6, 2018
But that’s over now. And the possibility that Newark will have poisoned the 10-3 surge that preceded it, particularly with heart-and-soul Patric Hornqvist out for a while, that’s got to be the focus.
Listen to Bryan Rust when I brought that up:
The main attraction remains making the playoffs.
