NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Penguins closed out their fifth Stanley Cup championship Sunday night with their second consecutive shutout win.
They held Nashville scoreless for the final 123:23 of the series, keeping the Predators below their playoff average for shots on goal in Games 5 and 6.
“Not too shabby for a ‘D’ corps that wasn’t very good,” Penguins defenseman Ian Cole said.
The Penguins defensemen have been doubted and underestimated since April 5. That was the day the team announced that Kris Letang would miss the entire postseason due to a neck injury.
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Without Letang, surely the Penguins would have no chance. In this day and age, common sense dictated, the first building block for any Stanley Cup champion is a bedrock defenseman on the blue line.
It’s partially true. No team had ever won a Stanley Cup without a defenseman that had at least received Norris Trophy votes at some point in his career.
Well, no team until Sunday night.
“I guess we showed that even if you’re missing one of your top guys, a bunch of guys that nobody really thought could do it pulled through and played unbelievable for us,” winger Chris Kunitz said.
It’s a cliche to say every other player chips in a little bit when a star goes down with an injury, but that’s literally what the Penguins did. Without Letang in the lineup to eat up his customary 25-30 minutes a night, Mike Sullivan distributed the ice time remarkably evenly among the six regular defenseman.
All six played somewhere between 18:53 (Cole) and 21:49 (Brian Dumoulin) per night in these playoffs, making the Penguins by far the most balanced team in terms of ice time in the league.
“I think everyone kind of wrote us off when [Letang got hurt],” Cole said. “He was such a big part of our run last year, but everyone stuck together, everyone probably assumed a little larger role and elevated their game.”
Players also chipped in to fill Letang’s various roles on the team. Justin Schultz took over as the quarterback of the top power play, and scored the opening goal in Game 5. To the extent that the Penguins did have a top shut-down pair, Dumoulin and Ron Hainsey largely assumed the responsibility of taking on the Predators’ top forwards.
“They know the pressure that comes with losing a guy who plays 25 to 30 minutes, and they weren’t intimidated by it,” captain Sidney Crosby said.
The Penguins defensemen also had the confidence of their general manager, Jim Rutherford.
When Letang went down, Rutherford had flashbacks to his 2006 Carolina Hurricanes, which also won the Stanley Cup without a marquee, minutes-eating defenseman. Bret Hedican led the Hurricanes’ blue line that year with 22:40 of ice time per game.
They may have been the last team to win that way, but it was proof enough to Rutherford that it could be done.
“That’s what I told our guys,” Rutherford said. “You can do it without a number one guy. You’ve got to manage their minutes, those guys have got to play within themselves and that’s what our six defensemen did. They played at the highest level they could and got it done.”
Not too shabby, indeed.
Sam Werner: swerner@post-gazette.com and Twitter @SWernerPG
First Published: June 12, 2017, 3:12 p.m.
