Good Monday morning!
This was a thing that happened in the Penguins’ 5-0 gutting of the Golden Knights today at PPG Paints Arena: Ben Kindel allowed a pass to slide between his own legs to a teammate who was 100% to his blind side, thus creating a sea of skating space for everyone else.
He’s 18. For real. I keep asking.
He’s also capable of completely game-changing plays, as occurred with his icebreaking goal at 14:56 of the first period, one well worth watching again and again:
I mean … it’s not the finish.
“Guys were telling me I didn’t really even get all of it,” the kid would tell me later.
And no, he didn’t. But there was enough of a slingshot effect, and Adin Hill wasn’t exactly sharp.
Whatever. The real beauty of it was bigger in scope.
Might not have looked like it here, but the Golden Knights are good. They’re 28-18-4, tops in the Pacific Division, and built upon a swift, swarming defense corps. And in the first 10 minutes of this game, they’d registered nine of the game’s first 10 shot attempts while closing off nearly every rush the Penguins tried.
Until the one above, when Anthony Mantha chipped the puck loose along the right boards near center red to spring Kindel for … nothing, really. Both Vegas defensemen, Noah Hanifin and Rasmus Andersson, were in perfect position to prevent any further progress, and a forward Braeden Bowman, was right behind Kindel taking a swipe at the puck.
What’s more, Kindel had no support.
I raised the scenario afterward:
“Yeah, I think I was kinda tight to the defensemen, and there wasn’t much of a play, so just trying to get a shot off,” he’d reply. “And if not, the puck’s going to end up in the corner in a good spot to get it back.”
Bruce Cassidy, Vegas’ coach, blamed it for killing his team’s early momentum.
“It looked like a harmless play,” he’d say, “and it’s in and now we’re chasing it again.”
“They’re a good team with good structure,” Kindel would say on that subject. “So it’s going to be hard to break them down in the neutral zone. But just trying to find ways to get through that pressure … sometimes, maybe getting it low, instead of a turnover.”
He’d seriously been contemplating the circumstances if he hadn’t scored.
He’d have an assist, too, in the third. He’s now got 15 goals and 14 assists through his first 55 NHL games. He’s also got the fourth-most goals of any 18-year-old in franchise history, behind Sidney Crosby’s 39, Jordan Staal’s 29 and Jaromir Jagr’s 18.
“He’s a kid who’s extremely mature on the ice,” Bryan Rust would say of Kindel. “You can see how he handles the puck, how he handles himself, but he’s mature off the ice too. He, for some reason, he gets how to be a pro, or he’s learning a lot faster than a whole lot of other guys do it at 18 years old. That’s something that’s been really cool to watch.”
Again and again.
JOE SARGENT / GETTY
The Penguins celebrate Bryan Rust’s power-play goal.
• Before I get further into the game: There’s nothing, nothing, nothing new on the Evgeni Malkin contract front. I reported from New York that Geno himself told me he expected there’d be some kind of meeting early this week, “maybe Monday.” That’s today. We’ll see.
As I wrote from there, I was hoping his reaction would’ve been more a misunderstanding.
• Two power-play goals — by Rust and Rickard Rakell — came, in no coincidence, from right in front of Hill, both set up by a chin-up Erik Karlsson finding them from center point.
That makes four power-play goals in the three games emerging from the Olympic break, which could become pivotal if it persists through Sidney Crosby’s absence.
“No question,” Karlsson told me afterward. “It’s a real weapon for us, and we need it.”
• I’ll offer a full column on the power play tomorrow upon my flight arriving in Boston.
• For Rakell, scoring in any conceivable way came as a visible relief. It’s not that he’s been in any significant slump — this was his fifth goal in the past 12 games — but it’s more that he creates so many chances that it can seem more noticeable when he doesn’t finish.
Nevertheless, when I teased him about finally scoring, he huffed back: “Yeah, no kidding, huh?”
• Rust’s goal came as a visible relief, too. He takes a ton of pride in the 20-goal mark, and good for him on that count. One of the most self-made athletes I’ve ever covered.