"Don't poke the Bear!" was how Brooks Orpik would word it.
This was eons ago, it seems, and it was how he'd describe the inherent idiocy of the Penguins' opponents ever provoking Evgeni Malkin. And yes, that 'B' up there is appropriately capitalized since the reference was to their own Russian Bear.
So when the following was witnessed in the opening minute of a 4-2 flattening of the NHL-leading Lightning on this Wednesday night at PPG Paints Arena ...
... I couldn't help but publicly share this caustic observation a few seconds later:
Dan Girardi levels Malkin inside the Pittsburgh blue line, dropping him on his derriere. Crowd oooohs at the site. We'll see what impact that has. Usually best to just leave him be. #DKPS #Penguins
— Dejan Kovacevic (@Dejan_Kovacevic) January 31, 2019
Mind you, there's nothing remotely wrong with the check. Girardi's always been a fierce, physical competitor, and he catches Malkin, chin down, trying to find the puck in his skates. He then cleanly drives the shoulder into the chest.
But context is everything, and the context here began Monday night, when the last-place Devils pitched a no-hitter at the Penguins and prevailed. They didn't just let sleeping dogs lie. They patted the sleeping dogs gently on the head, stole the bone, urinated on the tree and whisked out of the yard.
The context then carried into Malkin's next few shifts after the Girardi check, not least of which was this breathtaking, Paul Coffey-esque coast-to-coast eruption:
Imagine if Malkin had blown by Girardi there at the end, huh?
Flash-forward, barely a minute later:
This time, it was an aborted rush by one of Malkin's linemates, Bryan Rust. But yeah, that's 71 in gold on the neutral-zone trackback at the right boards. The pass went tape-to-tape to Rust to spring a two-on-one, culminating in the Phil Kessel swat artfully captured atop this column by Matt Sunday.
Penguins 2, Girardi minus-2.
And Malkin would wind up with another assist, a couple shots, a hit, a takeaway, a block and ... oh, right, an $18.2 million mega-prizefight with Steven Stamkos in which he acquitted himself well enough to at least land on top of Tampa Bay's captain, who sure looked from this perspective to initiate the gloves dropping.
Malkin wasn't around afterward, but Stamkos answered, "No," when asked if he'd been seeking a fight, adding, "I thought he gave me a little whack there, I gave him one back ... and we fought. That’s just hockey.”
Maybe the Lightning would have been better off sticking to hockey. Instead, they ran up a staggering 59 official hits, most by any of the Penguins' opponents all winter, not even counting two blindside cheap shots from Cedric Paquette and all kinds of post-whistle mayhem from Alex Killorn.
Because this isn't just about waking Malkin. It's about waking a 20-man collaborative from their collective cot when, all too often, they look completely incapable of doing that without some figurative sledgehammer to the noggin.
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