It’d be unfair to say all that much about the Penguins’ continued playoff survival is a surprise. At its core, we’re all still talking about a team built around Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, and a team that won a Stanley Cup a little less than 12 months ago. As of (late) Thursday, they’re four wins away from another.
Nobody should be shocked by any of this. Not anymore. Coach Mike Sullivan’s success percentage on button-pushing is somewhere in the low 90s. We’re in Year 2 of Bryan Rust’s springtime morph into a top-line winger. Jake Guentzel’s coming-out party was the Blue Jackets series, which feels like it happened sometime during the Bush administration.
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The goalie stuff is ... the goalie stuff. Again, people are feeling bad for Marc-Andre Fleury, and again, Matt Murray is proving that sentimentality doesn’t count for much. So, yes, we’ve seen most of this movie already — except last time, it starred Kris Letang.
It’s impossible to truly replace Letang. It’s amazing that the Penguins have come sufficiently close. And, if you have any sense of the circumstances that landed him here last season, it’s still, frankly, weird that Justin Schultz is leading the way.
Schultz, back in the lineup for the first time since injuring his upper body in Game 2, was the Penguins’ best defenseman on Friday night. He scored, too — on the Penguins’ only power play of the game, at 11:44 of the third period — and generally did what he’s done intermittently this season; function as a slightly off-brand version of Letang.
There’s no other defenseman with a right-handed shot. Nobody else is as comfortable starting the attack at 5-on-5. Nobody else can skate like Schultz. And if he’s inferior to Letang elsewhere, that’s fine — most players are. But if it’s a committee job to replace the sort of alpha-dog defenseman that every cap-era champ has had in common, Schultz deserves a whole lot of the credit.
“I think [the goal], in and of itself, is an indication of the impact he has on our team and our ability to win games. But it doesn't just stop there on the power play,” Sullivan said.
“He's a good puck mover. He's a mobile guy. He gets back to pucks. He sees the ice well. He can go tape-to-tape when the opportunities are there. So he helps our transition game.”
On Thursday, no Penguins defenseman had a larger positive effect on puck possession; with Schultz on the ice at even-strength, the Penguins controlled more than 65 percent of all shot attempts (23-12) and out-chanced the Senators 10-5.
Again, this is from a guy who was too banged up to play two days earlier.
“He’s a special hockey player. If he’s not playing at 100 percent and plays a game like that, I can’t wait to see him at 100 percent and hopefully in a couple days, because he was special tonight,” partner Ian Cole said.
“What he does with the puck is, in my mind, second to none. Just a great offensive talent and so solid defensively as well. I can’t say enough great things about him.”
It’s more than just fighting through a shoulder issue, or broken ribs, or whatever is bothering Schultz at the moment, though. Really — look at how hard he washed out in Edmonton. He came up through a toxic, broken system that he chose to join, so there was more than enough blame to spread around — but if he wasn’t the worst player in the NHL, it seemed equally silly to suggest that he’d be the leading defensive scorer on a conference champion within a year.
Here we are, though. The Penguins are four wins from doing what seemed unthinkable without Letang. They need Justin Schultz to help get them there — and if nothing else, he’s shown that he’s capable of getting it done.
Sean Gentille: sgentille@post-gazette.com, Twitter: @seangentille
First Published: May 26, 2017, 1:39 p.m.
