In the Game 7 victory that at last sent the Penguins back to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since they won it all in 2009, Sidney Crosby did not score until he arrived at the postgame press conference, when he delivered a line every bit as pertinent as the two Bryan Rust goals that won the game.
“It’s not easy,” Crosby said. “Having gone through a couple of those early on — you know, 20, 21 years old and playing in the Final — I think you have more appreciation for it now.”
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So much can get in the way of a team achieving its destiny of multiple championships, and that’s not even including the other talented teams that expect to accomplish the same.
We know this because just about anything that could stand between the Penguins and a return to the championship series has emerged with more ferocity than Mark Messier at his peak, more stridency than Patrick Roy at his very sharpest.
The greatest beauty of the Super Bowl is you get essentially two full weeks to consume the accomplishment. Those two weeks can consume you, of course, if you’re a player overwhelmed by the pressure (as we’ve seen in advance of more than one of the 50 games) or if you’re a fan caught up in the various intoxicating beverages that flow like water in whichever city is host.
In baseball or basketball or hockey, though, you reach the monumental but lately underrated accomplishment of winning two or three playoff series — aware that falling short in any one of them is a highway to athletic emptiness — and then you rush back onto the field of play in a few days and commence still another.
It seems a shame. The Penguins’ trip back to the Stanley Cup Final has been so arduous it deserves a greater period of reflection and celebration.
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There are six players still with the organization from the team that raised the 2009 Cup.
All but one endured at least one monumental, potentially catastrophic setback in the time since.
-- Crosby, the captain and brightest star, missed fully half of a potential Hart Trophy season in 2010-11 after hits in consecutive games against Washington and Tampa Bay left with him concussion symptoms that did not abate until a quarter of the following season passed. He had played so brilliantly before the injury that even though he did not play from Jan. 6 on, he still finished as the Penguins’ leading scorer.
-- Evgeni Malkin, the center who would be the top player on nearly every other team, missed nearly half of that same season after he tore both the ACL and MCL in his right knee. He hasn’t played a full season since, and only in 2011-12 did he come close, missing seven games to recover from the knee surgery but then leading the league in goals, points and winning the Hart Trophy.
-- Kris Letang, a promising young defenseman in the Cup year, developed into an All-Star but in January 2014 suffered a stroke. He missed half of that season but returned to play in the playoffs. He also has had concussion problems and missed the Penguins’ quick trip through the 2015 playoffs after a hit in a late-March regular season game.
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-- Pascal Dupuis, once a trade throw-in who became an indispensable Crosby winger, missed most of the 2013-14 season as the result of an ACL tear that developed from an on-ice collision. Shortly after his return the following season, it was discovered he had developed a blood clot that traveled from his leg to his lung. The inability to play while on blood-thinners kept him out the rest of 2014-15, but he attempted a comeback this season that was aborted when symptoms returned during an extended road trip. He was forced to retire after 18 games.
-- Marc-Andre Fleury, the popular goaltender who held the Detroit Red Wings to two goals over 120 minutes of Game 6 and 7 in the 2009 Final, all but saw his sensational 2016 season end because of a concussion. He was named the team’s regular-season MVP, but his symptoms lingered deep enough into the playoffs for coach Mike Sullivan to grow more comfortable with his replacement.
-- Chris Kunitz, the tough, reliable winger whose scoring topped out at 35 goals in 2012-13, simply got old.
This is not to say only injury and misfortune derailed the Penguins. In 2013, they entered the Eastern Conference playoffs as No. 1 seed, with nine more points in a lockout-shortened season than their nearest competitor, but flopped so miserably against Boston in the conference final they were swept.
In 2014, they blew a 3-1 series lead in the second round against New York, a result that got their Cup-winning coach and general manager fired. In 2010, they had a 3-2 lead against No. 8 seed Montreal at that same stage and were thumped at home in a seventh game. They have been whole, or close to whole, and still fell short of their potential.
They play a sport with the narrowest of margins, however, the one in which the greatest potential exists for a fluke bounce to usurp two hours of strategic and athletic brilliance.
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General manager Jim Rutherford at last built a team that seemed to improve as the playoffs advanced, that took out the top team in the league without even needing seven full games, and still the difference between reaching the Final and not was a goal scored on a pass purposely deflected by defenseman Ben Lovejoy off the end boards that was stuffed by Rust into a puck-sized hole beneath goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy’s armpit.
“We’ve been in a lot of different situations, a lot of different types of games — high-scoring games, low-scoring games, some wacky games,” Crosby said.
“I think those experiences build a lot of confidence in the group and a lot of belief, especially when you come on the right side of things.”
The saying goes that it’s better to be lucky than good.
In hockey, it’s hard to be either without both.
