Pittsburgh Penguins forward Evgeni Malkin celebrates his third goal on the Carolina Hurricanes during the third period on Thursday night.SHAUN BEST/Reuters
Publicly, no one on the Pittsburgh Penguins' side will ever say their series with the Carolina Hurricanes is over, even if it stands 2-0 in their favour.
As a burgeoning Stanley Cup contender, they are experienced enough to know that much. It does nothing to advance the cause to presume too much; or take any opponent for granted; and certainly not Carolina, which has already eliminated a No. 1 and a No. 3 seed from the 2009 playoffs.
Still, when the inevitable does occur, and the Penguins do eventually advance to the Stanley Cup final for a rematch with the Detroit Red Wings, the critical question will become: Did they learn enough from last year's six-game loss to turn the tables on the defending champions?
On some levels, the historical precedent may be to the mid-1980s, when the New York Islanders were winning championships on a consistent basis, but a young Edmonton Oilers' team loomed as a potential threat, with the likes of Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey and Grant Fuhr in the line-up.
The Penguins are the closest thing on offer in today's NHL to the Oilers of that era, something coach Dan Bylsma (who played with Gretzky briefly in Los Angeles) knows only too well. In reference to Evgeni Malkin's extraordinary highlight-reel goal that sealed the victory over Carolina on Thursday, Bylsma noted: "There are not many players in the world that can make a play like that - and two of them are on our team."
The second, of course, is Sidney Crosby, who is in the midst of an exceptional breakout playoff season himself.
The first time the Oilers went to the Stanley Cup final against the Islanders - in 1983 - they were schooled by the more experienced team and learned something from that encounter; that the playoffs are all about laying it on the line, every shift, every game, every play. The next time the two teams met, in the spring of 1984, the Oilers reversed the result, winning the first of what would be five championships in a seven-year span, because that lesson sunk in.
Last year, a similar scenario unfolded in the Red Wings-Penguins' series. Pittsburgh pushed Detroit to six games - and kept its playoff hopes alive with a dramatic multiple overtime win in facing elimination in Game 5 - but ultimately fell short.
The Red Wings' apparent edge was so great to one of the key Penguins' players, right winger Marian Hossa, that he elected to sign with Detroit in the off-season, on the grounds that playing for the Red Wings gave him his best chance of sipping from the Stanley Cup.
Soon, we'll see if Hossa's assessement proves to be true. Undoubtedly, his presence in the Red Wings' line-up will be one of the major talking points in the run-up to a prospective Detroit-Pittsburgh final.
The Penguins are a different team year-over-year on some important levels. There is Hossa and no tangible contributions from Petr Sykora either. Sykora was a top-six forward for last year's finalists, but has been parked in the press box for most of these playoffs. On the plus side, the Penguins also have another valuable year of playoff experience under their collective belts, which seems to be more important for Malkin's development than it is for Crosby, given that the latter was exceptional last year as well.
When Edmonton won its first championship, Messier received the team's first-ever Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. His emergence, to supplement Gretzky's contributions, ultimately pushed the Oilers over the top.
It is not so much of a reach to suggest that if Malkin can continue to perform at the level that he's playing at since about halfway through their second-round series against the Washington Capitals, his contributions would greatly enhance Pittsburgh's chances of dethroning the oh-so-efficient and deep Red Wings.
He is, in effect, the wild card in the equation.
Malkin wasn't much of a factor in the Red Wings' series last year, negated partly by Detroit's defensively efficient centre-ice corps. His struggles were explained away, partly because of sickness (he reportedly contracted the flu just before the final and wasn't right for a week) - and he never got his rhythm after that.
Getting Malkin's view on his own progress and evolution is difficult, because of the language barrier. However, Crosby - who is used to answering questions on his behalf - addressed the matter in an open way, following Malkin's three-goal game the other night.
Asked specifically about the criticism directed towards Malkin's ordinary final last season, Crosby - who is no stranger to hard scrutiny himself, suggested that it's just the nature of the playoff beast.
"You expect that everything is dissected so much game by game," said Crosby. "That's just the way it is.
"We as players and teammates all feel (the criticism was unwarranted). But when points and production sometimes aren't there, those are the things that are said."
Crosby went on to add: "As far as how he handled it, I don't think he really let it bother him a whole lot. It's never easy, but … we realize in the dressing room that guys do a lot out there besides sometimes not producing. And the best thing to do is just stick together. We all depend on each other to help each other out."
To Crosby, the difference in Malkin this year is just that - one more year of experience under his belt … "and knowing that there are going to be tough games and not worrying about it, moving on. Whether it's a great game or a tough one, it's about the next one a lot of times.
"He's probably just better off because of that, experience-wise, but actually the guys can take their game to a new level. He's able to do that and that's a huge boost for us."
Songs of innocence and experience: A conversation with Detroit Red Wings coach Mike Babcock is always engaging, and this is especially true, when he wants to take a counterintuitive position on a topic that came up a lot in his series against the Chicago Blackhawks - the aforementioned value of experience in the Stanley Cup final?
There is a vast gap in playoff experience between the Wings and the Blackhawks. Does that give Detroit an edge, given that so many of their players have played longer and understand how poise matters in pressure-packed playoff games, in close games?
Detroit appeared to school the younger Blackhawks in the opener, winning by three and realistically, could have had more if they had had a little more puck luck.
And yet, Babcock saw it differently - that his team, with all its vaunted experience, turned the puck over far too often for his liking in the series opener, compared to the younger Blackhawks, who were supposed to succumb to the pressure.
It was an interesting point, given that Babcock made it before his Red Wings coughed up a 2-1 third-period lead - usually money in the bank for the Detroiters - during Tuesday night's second game of the Western Conference final, before eventually pulling out the victory in overtime on a bad gaffe by the Blackhawks' Brian Campbell who is one of their more experienced players.
"I think (experience) is an easy thing to talk about because they got some players that are younger than ours," said Babcock. "I think experience is a great thing when you have it. When you don't have it, you think it's overrated. "Do I think it's going to determine who wins the series? Absolutely not."
ETC ETC: As predicted last week, the Minnesota Wild hired Chuck Fletcher, Ray Shero's primary assistant and son of Hall Of Famer Cliff Fletcher, to be their next general manager, replacing Doug Risebrough. The younger Fletcher grew up in Calgary, where his father was GM for the Flames' first decade in Canada, and then went on to graduate from Harvard, at which point he returned to Calgary and spent a year with Hockey Canada. From there, he spent a short time working as a player agent with Newport Sports Management before holding a variety of NHL front office positions. Fletcher joined the Penguins in 2006 and since then, oversaw the team's primary minor-league affiliate in Wilkes-Barre Scranton, which has produced a handful of players for Pittsburgh, along with Bylsma, who was coaching there until Michel Therrien was fired. The younger Fletcher inherits a Minnesota team without a head coach; you wonder if he'd consider Pat Quinn as his choice, given that Quinn also has a long history with his dad; is considered a players' coach; and most importantly, prefers to play an up-tempo style, something that'll be critical to the Wild organization as it tries to re-invent itself, after years of being an NHL punch line for its slavish devotion to defensive hockey. Oh, and there's the little matter of getting Marian Gaborik to sign on the dotted line, or risk losing the top offensive player in the organization for nothing as an unrestricted free agent … Even under ideal circumstances, the Boston Bruins would probably have had a hard time duplicating this year's breakout season, in which they chased the San Jose Sharks to the wire for the best overall record in the league, before coming up just short. Two top-six forwards, Phil Kessel and David Krejci, face long off-season rehab programs and reportedly will not be ready for the start of the season. Of course, there could be a silver lining in that both players are coming off their entry-level contracts and thus might attract free-agent offer sheets. The injury issue may convince some teams to back off, if they ever considered trying to poach them away in the first place, theoretically making it easier for the Bruins to get them signed … This year's Victoria Cup, an IIHF initiative that pits Europe's top club team against a touring NHL squad, will feature the Blackhawks and the Zurich Lions of the Swiss league. Zurich won the inaugural Champions' league title this past season, defeating Russia's Metallurg Magnitogorsk in the final. The Champions League is the de facto club championship of Europe. Ideally, the IIHF wants the NHL's entry in the Victoria Cup to be the Stanley Cup champion; in the hopes that the tournament - now just an exhibition game, prior to the start of the NHL season in Europe - becomes something more than that, a true world club championship series. The games will take place in late September, just before the Blackhawks travel to Helsinki to open the regular season with two games against the Florida Panthers.
AND FINALLY: Hard to believe but when Chris Kunitz scored for the Penguins Thursday night, it was his first goal in 19 games, regular-season and playoff. Considering Kunitz was a reliable scorer in his years with the Anaheim Ducks - sometimes playing with Teemu Selanne, sometimes with Ryan Getzlaf - it was a maddening, perplexing drought, one that was magnified since his usual centre, in five-on-five situations is Crosby. Accordingly, getting one to finally go gave Kunitz a palpable sense of relief. Or as he put it: "Yeah, it definitely feels good. But our team is a close group in the locker room. It's not about the goal, it's more about the win. Personally, it's all good to get it done, but we've been having a lot of guys score goals that maybe aren't expected to - and stepping it up." It's a nice sentiment, but in point of fact, the Penguins have been a two-trick pony offensively in these playoffs. Crosby leads with 13 goals; Malkin has 10. After that, it's a significant drop-off to Bill Guerin at five, and two players - Ruslan Fedotenko and Mark Eaton - tied with four apiece.