Evgeni Malkin was speaking in his second language, so sure, there were a few flaws in his syntax, a word or two transposed now and then.
There was, however, no mistaking the message Malkin delivered while speaking with reporters Thursday: He believes the Penguins are fully capable of winning Game 4 of their qualifying-round matchup with the Canadiens and distilling the series to a best-of-60-minutes Saturday.
With one rather large asterisk.
The Penguins, he said, can't play the way they did for a lot of their 4-3 come-from-ahead loss in Game 3 Wednesday if they hope to have a realistic chance of forcing a Game 5.
"If we play right, we have a good chance to win," Malkin said, adding that "we stopped playing" after building a 3-1 lead in Game 3.
Why that happened Wednesday is hard to say; that it did happen defies dispute. Restoring the passion and urgency to their game might be the most important move the Penguins could make before Friday afternoon.
"It's certainly not where it needs to be," Mike Sullivan said. "Five-on-five, we didn't execute as well (in Game 3) or we didn't defend as well when we didn't have the puck, and there's a level of urgency associated with that. Right now, we have to find the urgency in our game if we're going to be at our best. The stakes are high, and there's certainly no reason for us to not have it at this point."
Although it's possible, perhaps even likely, that Sullivan will make some personnel changes for Game 4, he declined to divulge any that he might be considering.
"If I were to make any personnel changes, I probably wouldn't share it with you guys," Sullivan said. "That would be something we would keep amongst our team."
He also acknowledged that swapping players in and out of the lineup at this point of a series is not without its perils.
"Any time a coach or a group makes changes, there's always an element of risk associated with it," Sullivan said. "But one could argue that there's an element of risk associated with not making a change, as well."
Asked specifically about the No. 3 defense pairing of Justin Schultz and Jack Johnson, he said simply, "I have a lot of confidence in our whole group."
For most of the first two games, Sullivan had ample reason to feel that way.
"When we've played our best hockey, we've been really good in this series," Patric Hornqvist said. "That's when we play fast, play relentless and we're hard on pucks and we create scoring chances that way. ... We just have to do the things we know we can do well."
Sullivan praised his players' work at practice Thursday, describing the workout as "pretty energetic" and saying that, "I think we've got a confident group."
The question, though, is whether they have the on-ice commitment to back up their words.
"We want to play more," Malkin said. "We have a great team. We have a great organization. We don't want to finish tomorrow, for sure."
• Montreal defensemen have accounted for three goals -- two of them game-winners by Jeff Petry -- and six assists in the series, compared to no goals and three assists (one each for Brian Dumoulin, John Marino and Schultz) by the Penguins counterparts. While the Penguins would like to get a little more offensive production from guys like Schultz and Kris Letang, it's probably more important that they do a better job of blunting the offensive impact of Montreal's defensemen than they did Wednesday.
"Obviously, they had an impact in Game 3," Sullivan said. "Petry scores, (Shea) Weber scores. How active they were in the offense was significant. I don't think we did as good a job of controlling territory ... as we did in Game 1 and Game 2.
"I don't think we had as much puck-possession as we did in the first two games. Maybe as a result, we didn't force them to have to expend energy defending us. I think we can do a better job at trying to dictate the terms out there."
• Malkin, who has failed to score on any of his team-leading 17 shots in the series, said Montreal's Carey Price "is the best goalie, probably, in the league right now." Price has allowed seven goals on 111 shots, a save percentage of .937.
• The Penguins scored on their first two power plays in Game 3 after going 1-for-12 with the extra man in the first two games.
"I think it's going to (have) a big effect for us," Hornqvist said. "We have some confidence now. We're shooting the puck and when we get those second and third chances, that's usually what the power play is all about."
• The Penguins failed to fend off elimination for so much as a game in either of the past two springs; Washington beat them in six in 2018 and the Islanders swept them the following year. One noteworthy distinction: The Capitals and Islanders were seeded higher than the Penguins, while the Canadiens finished 15 points behind them in the truncated 2019-20 regular season and almost certainly would not have qualified for postseason play had the coronavirus pandemic not intervened.
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