A couple winters ago in Calgary, Bryan Rust's hands might as well have been cryogenically frozen, colder even than the subzero temps outside the Saddledome.
I don't remember how long his goal slump was, but I can retell vividly what he told me as part of a long talk we'd had that day.
"I'd like to score. I'm going to score," he spoke. "But my game's not going to change regardless. I'm going to keep being the player I've always been."
He did resume scoring, of course. But never like he is now.
His goal in the Penguins' 4-3 overtime victory over the Flyers on this Friday night at PPG Paints Arena was his team-leading 22nd. And he's achieved that, let's not forget, in just 37 games, having missed most of the season's opening month to injury. Of those 37 games, he's now scored at least once in 19 of those.
Yeah, more than half.
How?
The simplest formula is to cite his shooting percentage, currently at 19.5. That ranks No. 1 in the NHL among all 26 players who've scored more than 20 goals, a half-percent ahead of Winnipeg's wonderful marksman, Mark Scheifele. And it ranks No. 1 in Rust's career by, oh, a million miles or so, considering the figure over his first five NHL seasons had been 10.7.
But again, how?
The old hockey scout's mantra is that snipers are born, not made. One hears it on the floor of the NHL Draft every summer. A kid can be coached to defend, to be tougher, even to create. But not to finish. That part, they say, is innate.
I ran this past Rust after practice Thursday in Cranberry, and he bristled, albeit with familiarity.
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