PITTSBURGH — Of course Ian Cole wrapped up Nick Bonino. That’s the least you can do for the guy who scrapes together your bail money. He puts the cash on the table, the door opens up, and you give him a hug.
He was right there in front of Cole, Bonino was, a split-second after scoring in overtime and ending the Penguins’ series against the Capitals. It was Cole who, a few minutes before, had directed the third installment in Pittsburgh’s “Puck Over the Glass” trilogy.
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It was the worst of the three, and it forced OT in a game Pittsburgh should’ve ended in regulation. At 6:32 of the extra period, though, it didn’t matter. That was thanks to Phil Kessel, who found one of his linemates in front of the net, and Carl Hagelin, who put the puck on net and, ultimately, Bonino, who buried the rebound.
Nick Bonino ends the series. (Getty Images)
All three joined Pittsburgh from July 1, 2015, to Jan. 18, 2016, with Hagelin as the midseason addition. So maybe think of Cole’s hug as the culmination of GM Jim Rutherford’s on-the-fly rebuild of his team.
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(And be honest about it: The Penguins were courting of one of all-time choke jobs. They’d already missed out on a chance at eliminating Washington in Game 5, and Game 7s are Game 7s; you’d rather not go into one because of a wasted three-goal lead at home. Now, they don’t need to worry about that.)
“I was right next to Bones when he scored and I just hugged him and took him into the glass,” Cole said after the game. Any other Penguin, particularly Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, should’ve done the same; this is the sort of series that, before Christmas, they seemed terminally incapable of winning, and now it’s over.
Malkin and Crosby, despite doing plenty of positive stuff, combined for exactly one goal in six games against the best team in the league. Forget the group that started the season; this was the exact scenario that would’ve railroaded any Pittsburgh team since the franchise's 2009 Cup win.
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It actually has railroaded a few, particularly after Crosby shook his injury issues in 2012; you can look at last year’s example as the template. In the first round against the Rangers, Crosby and Malkin combined for four points. All were by Crosby, and he didn’t score a goal after Game 2. They were done in five.
That’s not meant as a particular indictment of either’s play overall; they’re still better than point-per-game players in their careers. They have Stanley Cup rings. They just can’t do it alone, because nobody can.
If anything, it’s an indictment of hockey; hockey is unforgiving. It’s chaos. When it comes down to goals, it’s random, and distressingly so; that’s why you don’t put all your eggs in two baskets, and that’s why the “secondary scoring” cliche is so true. If you rely too heavily on a pair of players to carry you, from a point-production standpoint, you are going to fail.
And that’s what Pittsburgh did, due to either injuries or errant roster correction, for years. Teams with sustainable playoff success can’t rely on guys like Blake Comeau, Nick Spaling, Tanner Glass and Brian Gibbons to score goals. They can’t rely on Brandon Sutter to center a point-producing line.
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They can rely on Matt Cullen, though, They can rely on young, cheap whirlwinds like Bryan Rust and Conor Sheary. Those are the sorts of players that, when your two superduperstars can’t find the net, tend to pick up the slack; they don’t just drive play. They score.
In this series, most of all, Pittsburgh relied on Kessel, Hagelin and Bonino. “They seemed to be the group that scored all the time in the games,” Capitals coach Barry Trotz said.
Kessel leads the team with 12 points overall. Hagelin led it in this series with seven. Bonino, generally, serves as the triggerman for those two, but on Tuesday night, he was the finisher.
"He's a cerebral player. He sees the game well on both sides of the puck," Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said. "That line, I think, has been really good for us for a long time now."
Sullivan tried to spread the love beyond those three, too; Pittsburgh rolls four lines with some degree of success.
"Not everybody showed up on the score sheet," Sullivan said, "but everybody made a significant contribution to helping us win tonight."
Right, but some of them made more significant contributions than others, and the others are named Crosby and Malkin. Not long ago, that seemed impossible.