Sidney Crosby, No Hyperbole Possible

Many years ago in my epically profligate youth, I was out drinking with RJ and the Deadhead. (Sounds like a bad sitcom.) After about 37 pitchers of beer, the three of us had a rousing argument over who was the better quarterback -- Terry Bradshaw? Or Terry Bradshaw? Oh, emotions boiled over, fingers were pointed, spittle flew and I do believe that I pulled a Kruschev and banged my shoe on the table. The whole argument culminated with RJ hollering, 'You can take your Bert Jones, and you can take your Dante Pastorini, and you can shove them straight up your ass!'

I feel like I can have the same argument about Sidney Crosby. Who is a better hockey player? Sid? Or Sid? And to paraphrase my old drinking buddy, you can take your Alex Ovechkin and you can take your Steven Stamkos, and you can shove them straight up your ass!

Two years ago, Sidney Crosby was the best player in the NHL. I thought that he had arrived at his true, highest self and in so doing, carried his team to a Stanley Cup championship, personally besting the entire Philadelphia Flyers roster, then Ovie, then the Red Wings along the way. It was great. Pittsburgh fans were both lucky and appreciative. Hell, we were all on cloud nine. Or cloud 87.

Then, something crazy happened. Sid got better. I didn't actually think it was possible, and yet, he went ahead and did it.

When Sid first arrived in Pittsburgh, he was immediately one of the best players in the NHL. The most obvious strengths of his game were his vision and speed. And his soft hands. But there were holes in his game. Following that rookie year, he vowed to spend his off-season improving his face-offs. I'm not sure how a person gets better at that, but he did it. Then, despite being a point generating machine, the knock on Crosby was that he, himself, did not score enough goals. So the next year, he promptly went out and scored more. It seems like when he sets his mind to a task, he just simply achieves it. He is, quite simply, the best player in the NHL. And there is no argument to be made.

Some are enamored of laser-like wrist shots, like the one Ovie unleashes from all over the ice. If there were a way to measure talents in a vacuum, to somehow quantify just the innate, singular talent of launching a disc of vulcanized rubber towards a goalie at the speed of light, then Ovechkin has more talent that Sid. Geno Malkin probably has more. Marian Gaborik, who has one of the sneakiest, most effective shots in the game for my money, has more.

But the thing you have to factor with Sid is totality of his game -- that his game is so complete is precisely what makes him so special.

He wins faceoffs.

He plays defense.

He can see plays happening two and three seconds before they happen.

He has speed and strength and elegance.

He scores from up high, and he plants himself at the goal mouth, fight off cross-checks and buries the puck behind helpless goaltenders.

This year, he is everywhere on the ice and has scored from every spot of the Consol Center except the executive washroom.

He leads his team by example, brandishing his work-ethic and equanimity. He never gives up on a play and the team has taken on that personality, which puts him light-years ahead of everybody else. He is the greatest and I wonder, is it possible we STILL haven't seen the best he has to offer?

So, Penguins fans, who is better? Sid? Or Sid?

And we get to watch him ever night. So really, who is luckier? Pens fans? Or Pens fans?

NHL 2010 Playoffs: Montreal Canadiens Upset Pens in Round Two

From True/Slant on May 13, 2010:


Montreal Canadiens Knock the Crown Off the Pittsburgh Penguins and Dance On

Image by Getty Images North America via Daylife
The end of the line was more brutal, bloodier and more horrifying than “Friday the 13th” or “Jaws” or “Halloween.” The defending Stanley Cup Champs were not only felled by the Montreal Canadiens, but they willingly, knowingly rushed headlong into Freddy Kruger. They gave themselves a full-body moisturizing treatment with chum before diving into shark infested waters. It was as though Jamie Lee Curtis had offered herself up to Michael Myers for death and dismemberment. The final game in the old barn called Mellon Arena was the hockey equivalent of a team hoisting itself on its own petard.

All credit to Jaroslav Halak and the Montreal Canadiens. They got in the Penguins heads. It was something no other team has been able to do in the Sidney Crosby era. It’s not to say the Pens were unbeatable in that time. Clearly, they were not. But Sid’s team had never been self-defeating and self-defeated before. This was largely the same team that was so cool going into Game 7 in the second round versus the Capital last year, and then Game 7 of the Cup Finals against the Red Wings. Mentally, they could not be beaten. Until this series, until last night, until the Canadiens. The Pens hit a mental wall. To say nothing of the Halak wall in net.

The players they most needed to step up were nowhere to be found.

Sid was, once again, neutralized.

Geno seemed almost afraid to put the puck on Halak. At one point, he put a shot on net which Halak pulled in like they were playing pitch and catch, and Malkin just dropped his head. Defeated.

Brooks Orpik had only three hits and none of those were of the tooth-rattling, glass-shattering variety that are his trademark.

Sergei Gonchar made two heinous non-plays on the puck. They weren’t technically turnovers, but more like apathy toward the puck and the Hab player in front of him.

Flower. Oh, poor Flower.

On the other side, the Canadiens did everything they wanted to do and they did it to perfection.

Brian Gionta put two more in net, proving that he is still a burr under the Pens saddles. (Do penguins have saddles? Can you saddle a penguin? Gionta can.) Mike Cammalleri added a goal and assisted on another, continue to be the best player in this series. Well, the best player not named Jaroslav Halak. The defense blocked shots, altered shots, deflected shots and shrunk available passing lanes so as to be so tiny they were not visible to the human eye.

Everybody is calling this Montreal team a Cinderella, but after watching them closely for two rounds of hockey, they don’t look like a Cinderella to me. This team is not winning on flukey, lucky plays. (Okay, a bit of luck is involved, but a bit of luck is always needed for any team to advance this far in the charnel house known as the Stanley Cup playoffs.) This Canadiens group plays with the chemistry of Fred and Ginger on the dance floor and the attitude of the Bad News Bears. They were unimpressed by the hype and laser shot of Ovie and anything but intimidated by the pedigree of the defending Stanley Cup Champs.

Of course, one player is more responsible for the Canadiens miracle run than the others and too much cannot be said about the brilliance of Halak. They could have played another eight periods of hockey last night and the Pens would not have been able to get three more goals behind him. He’s quick, with a great glove and a great blocker pad. You can’t get a shot under him, either. He is almost impenetrable. But what’s most amazing about Halak is his vision. The Habs put two and three of their defenders in front of their net minder, to say nothing of Billy Guerin or Matt Cooke loafing there, so Halak is looking through a minimum of two other players to see a a small disc of vulcanized rubber flying toward him.

Any NHL caliber goalie can do that for one game. Sometimes, goalies can get in a zone like that. But to do that for 14 games? Against the likes of Crosby and Malkin, Ovechkin and Knuble? That’s an other-wordly zone, a whole other solar-system of a zone. Without exaggeration, it’s one of the greatest performances from a goaltender I’ve ever seen. And despite the fact that I wanted the Penguins to mount The Most Improbable Comeback Ever, by the end, I was really enjoying watching Halak work. That kind of excellence takes my breath away.

Last year, after Fleury had put in a particularly stellar performance, I compared him to a great mushroom hunter with his eyes on. That is to say, a person skilled in foraging for mushrooms can spot the elusive little fungi in areas that seem like a homogeneous visual plain to the untrained eye. Where I see leaves and tangled branches and such, a good mushroom hunter can edit the field of vision to spot the mushrooms. It’s an evolutionary adaptation known as “the pop-out effect.” I think Halak is the living embodiment of the pop-out effect right now. I can hardly wait to see what can do to Mike Richards or Patrice Bergeron.

NHL 2010 Playoffs: Flower Saves Game 3 for Penguins

From True/Slant on May 5, 2010:

Marc-Andre Fleury is not the kind of goaltender who pitches a shut out night after night. He’s no Patrick Roy, no Martin Broudeur, not even Grant Fuhr. Heading into Game Three in Montreal, he had allowed an average of more than three goals per game.

However, Fleury does have an impeccable sense of timing. He is to goaltending what Lucille Ball was to comedy. Her timing? Flawless. Try to find a mistake, a glitch, a missed opportunity to set up a joke or capitalize perfectly in Lucy’s chocolate shop conveyor belt antics or her Vitametavegamin pitch. You can’t. They are perfect, in execution, timbre and timing. Perhaps, if you culled over Lucy’s entire oeuvre, you’d find mistakes, the comedic equivalent of soft goals in the NHL, but when the vulcanized rubber hit the road, she was perfect.

And when the Penguins needed a flawless performance from the man they call Flower, he delivered. Big time. Fleury seems to have a sense of when in the ebb and flow of a game his team needs a big save from him. but this time, his team needed him to save the entire game, particularly that the Canadiens came out soaring.

The Habs played their game to a tee, putting together and executing the game plan they want and need to play to beat the Pens. They dictated tempo for the entirety of the first period. They pitched their tents right in front of Fleury and cycloned the puck into the offensive zone constantly.

Then, just four and one-half minutes into the game, the Canadiens went on the power play and cycled the the puck in front of Fleury pretty much for the duration of that two minutes. Orpik blocked a shot, then a Cammaleri shot went wide of the net (just), before Fleury turned away Brian Gionta and then made another save on another Gionta shot.

This was the game Montreal wanted, a low scoring affair, a game that was 1-0 the waning seconds. Low scoring games = Advantage Montreal. In their series with the Capitals, the average total goals scored in each of their four wins was four goals. That’s both teams. Whereas, in the three Washington wins, there was an average of nearly nine goals per game.

The Canadiens know how their bread is buttered. A low scoring affair, perhaps one with a one-goal differential, is what they were after. On home ice. In front of the best fans in the NHL.

The best chance was to score first and then fall into the rope-a-dope they’re becoming famous for. And for much of the game, Fleury was the only thing standing in their way.

Actually, that’s inaccurate. It’s not like Fleury withstood a constant barrage of pucks coming his way. First off, his defensemen were doing all they could in front of him to block shots and even Evgeni Malkin was credited with three blocks on the night, which thrills me almost more than his power play goal.

What Fleury faced, rather than a constant bombardment were several flurries of activity, separated by long lulls. I often think that it is harder for net minders to stay focused when they’re not in the action. The Canadiens got seven shots into the net in the first period, and then Fleury had to defend only four in the second period, with no seriously sustained rushes as he had seen earlier. It would have been so easy for him to lose focus, to let down, just a wee bit in the final period after Geno put a laser behind Halak just a minute in.

The Penguins, led by the diminutive Flower, regrouped, refocused and turned away opportunity after opportunity in the third period. That is one tough flower.

A flower by any other name would smell as sweet, or so the old saying goes. I’ll take my flower, the variety that only grows on a sheet of ice, the variety originally grown in Sorel, Quebec and transplanted to Pittsburgh any day.

NHL 2010 Playoffs: Capitals Teetering on the Brink of Elimination

From True/Slant on April 28, 2010:

Paging Mr. Ovechkin: Time to put up or shut up in the Stanley Cup Playoffs

Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Good teams win games. Great teams, teams with designs on flying championship banners over center ice, win games with power, elan and dash. And they also win ugly games when they have to.

Last night, in Game 7 of the Western Conference first round playoff with the Phoenix Coyotes, the Detroit Red Wings proved their championship mettle. Backed into a corner like a feral, dare I say it, coyote, the Wings attacked. They did what championship teams do. They scored on the power play, created opportunities on the penalty kill and crashed the net. Finally, they reached inside of the chest cavity of Ilya Bryzgalov, ripped out his heart and smashed it into terrine of coyote offal right there at center ice.

The big stars, the names we all know — Henrik Zetterberg, Nicklas Lidstrom and Pavel Datsyuk — led Detroit’s way. There’s a reason these guys are perennial all-stars who have played in the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row.

Meanwhile, over in the east, the reigning Stanley Cup champs, my Pittsburgh Penguins, crushed the hopes and dreams of the Ottawa Senators with an overtime victory in game 6 on Saturday night to move on to the second round. The Pens did that on a night when their big stars were quiet. Without Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby or Marc-Andre Fleury making their typical SportsCenter highlight reel plays, Pittsburgh’s grinders picked up the slack. Matt Cooke, Pascal Dupuis and Billy Guerin (at this point in his career, Guerin has to be considered a grinder), came through in the crunch. None of those guys are household names. Well, outside of Pittsburgh.

But both games illustrate that great teams, like the Pens and the Red Wings, find a way. Sometimes it’s in the stars and sometimes it’s the role players shine. Some games are master strokes of artwork. And others are misshapen, grunting, calloused beasts of burden. But they are champs, because they can win any which way you want to play it.

Tonight, with the Washington Capitals hosting the upstart Montreal Canadiens in a deciding game 7, we’ll see if the Caps have the heart of a champion.

You can go through the line up. On paper, this may be the most talented team in hockey. (I kinda feel like those draft “experts” judging talent on paper like that. It made me all, like, tingly. Now I know what it must feel like to style Mel Kiper’s hair.) The point is – Alex Ovechkin, Mike Knuble, Brooks Laich, Alex Semin, Eric Fehr, Nicklas Backstrom — this is the time for those guys to step up. Mike Green, too.

I know that shooting the puck at Montreal’s Jaroslav Halak is like firing a b.b. gun at the Berlin Wall right now, but shoot they must. More than that, Washington needs to play ugly, create chaos in front of Halak, make him uncomfortable and disrupt his vision and timing. They need to plant themselves in front of the net and get dirty goals. It’s no fun playing in front of the net. It’s hard work and it takes a lot out of a player.

The Caps haven’t done much of that – setting up in front of the net, that is. They fired 54 shots at Halak on Monday night, nearly a shot a minute, which would be impressive, except that I counted only a dozen of those shots that came from anywhere in the vicinity of the net. Pathetic.

The Red Wings set up in front of net. They’ve gotten to two Cup finals by planting themselves in front of the opposing goalies long enough for a fan to hit the bathroom, buy a pretzel and make it back to her seat at the Joe before one of the red suited beasts are dislodged. They camp out in front of goalies. The Penguins, a team loaded with beautiful outside shooters, will crash the net when need be. Exhibit A — Matt Cooke’s two goal game on Saturday.

The Capitals have been remarkably unphysical, unwilling to park in front of the net and unwilling or unable to hit, too. The team leader in hits this series is Ovie with 20 hits in six games (a testament to him, because scoring wingers are not usually the guys laying out the biggest hits), but a pathetic reflection on the rest of the Capitals and their allergy to going to the body. Of all the Caps defensemen, Mike Green has the most hits with 14. Compare that to Brooks Orpik with 32 or Brad Stuart with 27. No wonder these guys have to play a game 7 in the first round.

The Stanley Cup playoffs is like a series of exams. If you pass the first test, your reward is to take the second test.

The Capitals, the “best” team in the East, an unstoppable force that seemed to score at will gets exam number one tonight against the Canadiens. So, what’s it going to be Mr. Ovechkin? Are you guys true contenders? Are you willing to put your heads down, hit everything that moves, muck it up in the corners for the puck, absorb cross-checks to create opportunities in front of Halak and do all the less fun, unglamorous work necessary to win?

Welcome Back to Pittsburgh, Lord Stanley

I'd like to welcome Lord Stanley's official representative, Cup, back to Pittsburgh. It's been a while since your last visit, Cup, and a few things have changed.

What's that? Oh, yes, you are not mistaken, in fact that was the soft, sexy caress of Mario Lemieux's hands on you last night, but he doesn't play hockey any more. He owns the team now. Yes. Owns. No, I'm not kidding.

The Pirates? Oh, it really has been a while since you were here. They didn't win any titles and they've been just soul-crushingly horrible since you've left, but they have a pretty new ballfield, so they've got that going for them.

Yeah, a few other things have changed around here since then, too. We have a new Mayor. Sigh. I'll just leave it at that. And the housing boom that hit the rest of the country? Well, we never had that, but it's cool because when it all crashed and burned and brought the entire nation's economy down with it, it had a negligible impact here. In fact, ironically enough, Pittsburgh is being touted as a model of fiscal responsibility and good old American, ah, something or other involving character, I think. The city's in the New York Times all the time. Suddenly, they love us, though we're not so sure if the feeling is mutual.

Oh, yeah, that new Steelers coach that you met when you were here in 1992? He stayed for a long time and had a very good run. He finally won a Super Bowl in the 2005-2006 season, but then he retired and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina where he very publicly started rooting for the Carolina Hurricanes. Now he's about as popular around here as Marian "goal-less in the seven most important games of his career" Hosebag (tm Smiley). I guess those two can start golfing together any time.

You'll be spending your summer with a new bunch of guys, so let's get you up to speed on your hosts.

Let's start with Sidney Crosby, the youngest captain ever to tote you around the ice. (Notice, I didn't say 'hoist.' Why do people always say 'hoist?') Anyway, Sid's been touted as the great savior of the game since he was about 9 years old, which is good amount of pressure to carry around, but he never complains about it; he just works harder than he did the day before and, in spite of his youth, the guys in the Pens locker room would follow him to the ends of the earth. He's pretty much an assist machine. Just ask the old-timer and relative Pittsburgh newcomer, Billy Guerin, about what it's like to receive a pass from Sid right on the tape as he's perched in the goal mouth. He's rarely demonstrative and his game is less flashy than a few others, but he is a complete player in every way. He has fantastic hands and great vision and sees things opening up two and three moments before anybody else on the ice does.

The other guy I'm sure you'll be spending a lot of time with is Geno Malkin, the young Russian phenom who hauled in the Conn Smythe trophy, even as Detroit netminder Chris Osgood was thinking about where he'd display it in his home. Malkin's an amazing player. He can just physically take over a game and in Game 7, with Sid out with knee injury for much of the game, Geno threw himself all over the ice with reckless abandon to preserve the Pens victory. His english isn't great, but he's a good kid and he hasn't even reached his peak as a hockey player yet. Oh, don't be surprised if his mother uses you to serve her famous borscht.

Max Talbot is a local superstar, as he'll be the first to tell you, as much for his ebullient personality as his gritty style of play. He plays every shift with his foot flush on the gas peddle. His Game 7 heroics were the stuff made of legends. First, he and Geno irritated Brad Stuart into turning over the puck near the goal and then he buried it by going five-hole on Osgood. The second goal, the one that turned out to be the game winner, was again started when Talbot, this time teamed up with Chris Kunitz, badgered Stuart into another stupid turnover, this one at the blue line. Talbot raced towards Osgood, considered a cross-ice pass, reconsidered it, and lifted the puck over Osgood's shoulder. Top shelf, as Talbot himself would describe it. You'll have a lot of fun out with Max and I'm sure you'll get a lot of attention from the ladies.

Some of these guys aren't so young, and surely you remember Guerin from the old days with the New Jersey Devils, and Petr Sykora, too, from his 2000 performance with those Devils. Sergei Gonchar's been waiting a long time to meet you, but he was so anxious to do so that he played his usual steadying role after suffering a nasty knee injury in the Capitals series; we'll probably find out that he was skating with zero cartilage and ruptured ligaments in his knee ever since, but still played around 20 minutes a game. In Game 7, he logged of 24 minutes time, so yeah, I'd say he was pretty desperate to spend some time with you.

Even old Miro Satan made a return trip from Wilkes-Barre himself, just in the hopes he might dance with you.

The coach? Yeah, that's a crazy story to go from coaching in the AHL in Wilkes-Barre on Valentine's Day to winning the Stanley Cup just a few months later. It is stranger than fiction, indeed. By the way, is it kinda gay of me to have reading glasses that look like Bylsma's glasses? Even a little bit?

But this team is surprisingly deep and so many contributed. Jordan Staal is not even old enough to drink legally in Pennsylvania, but he was a penalty killing machine all playoffs and scored a short-handed goal in Game 4 that probably turned the whole series around. Tyler Kennedy is a grinder if there ever was one and he ended up having the game winner in Game 6. Line-mate Matt Cooke crushed everything within his vision in a red sweater. So did defenseman, Brooks Orpik. But then, he did that last year, so nobody was really surprised. Rob Scuderi single-handedly saved Game 6 with his in-goal heroics.

Well, yes I was getting to that. I was just saving the best for last, because, appropriately enough, so did he. Marc-Andre Fleury is a lithe, acrobatic guy, more of a dancer in net than a jock. They list him at 6' 2" and 180 pounds, but you'll see what a crock that is when you meet him. Perhaps Flower stands 6' 2" in his skates and weighs 180 in all of his gear, skates and stick included. He catches a lot of heat from the media and some of the fans love to disparage him, maybe because he seems so delicate, a trait which masks his iron will. Certain folks will dismiss his performance by pointing to his playoff goals against average (2.61 -- ranks 9th among playoff goalies), or his save percentage (.908 --10th among playoff goalies), but I'd direct you to his post-season wins: 16. It's the only number that matters. It must be said that he's had some rough moments. He let in two flukey goals off those funky springboards in Detroit in Game 1, then he let in a soft goal against Justin Abdelkader (who?) in Game 2. His brilliance in Games 3 and 4 was overshadowed by the Pens offensive firepower. Yeah, I know. He was horrible in Game 5. Just horrible. But when his team needed him most, he turned in back to back brilliant performances in Games 6 and 7 and he fought up until the very final moment, making a spectacular save on Niklas Lidstrom with less than one second left in Game 7. It was a save worthy the Mount Rushmore of saves, one of the Seven Wonders of the World kinda things.

It took a moment, after the clock wound down to zero, for anybody to realize that he had done it, and that the Pens had done it. With that, any questions about Fleury's capacity to perform in the clutch, to come up big in big moments, were answered. He went into a building that had his number, against a team that had his number, a team that circled like vultures for the last 20 minutes of action, and he stoned them. He just fucking stoned them. To be the best, you have to beat the best. That's what Fleury and the Pens did and that, my old friend, takes some stones.

So, welcome back. Give our best to Lord Stanley and enjoy your stay in Pittsburgh. You should get used to it. I can envision you spending a lot of summers here.

To Dream the Impossible Dream, on Ice

Penguins Plan of Attack. According to Generalissimo Me.

pittsburghdish.typepad.com/pittsburgh_dish/2009/06/dear-lord-how-can-we-win.html#more

Marc-Andre Fleury: the Flyers Dilemma (with apologies to Michael Pollan)

The Penguins head back to the friendly confines of Pittsburgh with a 3-1 lead in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs over the hated Philadelphia Flyers for one reason: Marc-Andre Fleury has got his eyes on.



That the Flower is the MVP of this series goes without saying. Why? A certain equanimity in the face of hoards of rushing, marauding Flyers is certainly one reason. The other is that Fleury is like a great hunter-gatherer who has his eyes on.



Like half of America, my beloved GearGal is reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, which saves me the trouble of reading it because she fills me in on the highlights. (Quick synopsis:  agribusiness is evil and read your labels). But watching Fleury turn away shot after shot, using his feet, his stick, his glove, and I think even his neck guard at one point, I said, 'wow, he's seeing the puck when there is no way he can see it,' to which she replied, 'he's like a great mushroom hunter who "has his eyes on."'



That is to say, a person skilled in foraging for mushrooms can spot the elusive little fungi in areas that seem like a homogeneous visual plain to the untrained eye, composed of nothing but leaves and tangled branches and such. Of course, because Pollan is a bad ass, he dug a little deeper into the phenomena:





"I became, perforce, a student of the 'pop-out effect,' a term I'd first heard from mushroomers but subsequently learned is used by psychologists studying visual perception. To reliably distinguish a given object in a chaotic or monochromatic visual field is a daunting perceptual task, one so complex that researchers in artificial intelligence have struggled to teach it to computers. Yet, when we fix in our mind some visual quality of the object we're hoping to spot -- whether its color or pattern or shape -- it will pop out of the visual field, almost as if on command. To get your eyes on is to have this narrow visual filter installed and functioning. That's why Ben had me practice on his finds, to fix in my mind's eye the pattern of morels as seen against the forest's layer of duff. To hunt for mushrooms makes you appreciate what a crucial evolutionary adaptation the pop-out effect is for a creature that forages for food in a forest -- especially when that food doesn't want to be found."



And it seems to me, when Fleury is going good, when he's got his eyes on, he's experiencing advanced, heightened pop-out effect. He made 45 saves on Tuesday night in Philadelphia. 45! And at least half of those came in rush-hour on the Schuylkill-type traffic, with two or three or four bodies in front of him, each shielding him from a clear view of potential shooters, obscuring his view of an airborn puck until the last second. But he saw them all. (Even the one that got in, but his toe got caught in the goal post slowing him down enough that he couldn't get to it.) 



Of course, the 2003 overall number 1 draft pick has the speed, agility, flexibility, strength and toughness necessary to respond to those shots. But let's face it, if we put a mere mortal, even a really good hockey player, in net last night, at least five other shots would have lit the scoring lamp, because another guy wouldn't have even seen those shots. There was one shot where he was standing directly behind a Flyer and a Pen, as a shot whistled toward his right shoulder, and just like that, his glove was up, as he cradled the puck with the kind of ease one would expect during a laconic game of backyard catch.



There is no telling what the Pens can do if The Flower keeps his eyes on.