It could be because of Pat Quinn's presence or Craig MacTavish's absence, but Dustin Penner is playing the best hockey of his career.
EDMONTON - Dustin Penner is about halfway toward being a real pro. Maybe 60 per cent.
"It's my fourth year in the league," he said at one point during a media scrum this week. "So it's maybe time to start improving."
It's that kind of frank statement - an admission that whatever has gone wrong in his evolution, that he owns a certain part of it - that tells you that at age 27, he is finally getting over the hump.
Jason Strudwick roomed with Penner on the road last season, watching from the other queen bed as Penner's career reached its nadir.
Their coach, Craig MacTavish, simply couldn't stand looking at Penner's game anymore. The fans had run out of hope for the six-foot-four, 245-pound big man, the softest power forward they'd ever seen. The media murdered Penner weekly on his weight and lack of production.
"He seemed to be a lightning rod for a lot of abuse from a lot of people," said Strudwick, master of the understatement. "Publicly he handled it really well. Privately, he probably had his moments. But maybe that's part of the process. You have to go through some tough times."
It is a process that began like a lottery win for Penner the day then-Oilers GM Kevin Lowe plucked him off then-Anaheim GM Brian Burke's Anaheim roster as a Group II free agent. But the process never evolved.
Let's face it: other than the pay cheque, the move was a disaster for Penner and the Oilers both.
Edmonton gave away a bunch of draft picks and five-year cap hit of $4.25 million per, and got back a player who was coasting. For two seasons Penner was not in top physical shape - an inexcusable state for a professional athlete.
"He's never been fit enough to help us," MacTavish said last November, on the day he finally gave up on Project No. 27. "I can't watch it for ... certainly not another two and-a-half years."
Fateful words, those. MacTavish was fired at season's end.
As of Tuesday, Penner is eight games into his third - and by far most promising - season in Edmonton. He has five goals and nine points in eight games, is plus-6, and nightly looks very much like the player Lowe figured he was getting three seasons ago.
"Confidence," he said, when you ask him what the difference is.
From where does that come?
"I think maybe experience, overall maturity," he said. "When you want the puck on our stick and you're not afraid to make mistakes, it's a fun game."
The inference is not overt, but it is there. He is growing, he'll admit, but without saying it he says it: he is blossoming now because MacTavish is out of the picture.
Today, he is having "probably as much fun as I've had playing the game.
"Being able to go out there," he said. "You make a mistake but the way (Pat Quinn) coaches here is, 'I'll give you the leeway to make those mistakes, but you've got to be the guy who comes back and makes up for it.'"
The first part of becoming a pro is being in shape. There is no hint of an extra chin anymore, and you can see through Penner's Under Armour shirt you can see a muscular torso that was never there before.
Step 2 is introspection, and that often takes a few different coaches to drive home the salient points.
In Anaheim, Randy Carlyle told Penner certain things as a young player. In Edmonton, MacTavish likely found many of the same flaws. Finally, a third coaching staff has given Penner a clean slate, but you can bet they're asking him to form many of the same good habits that past coaches asked for.
It takes longer for some than others, but eventually the right man presses the right buttons, and the lessons take.
"Maybe (it's) the coaching, maybe my overall maturity," Penner said, not totally sold on the sportswriter's theory. "Just a better understanding of the game. Sometimes the learning curve takes a little longer, depending on the situation."
Said Strudwick: "I played with Todd Bertuzzi for quite a few years. It took him a while to evolve to where he scored all the goals he did. I guess it's just understanding when to hold on to (the puck), or not to hold on to it. When to use your body. It just takes a little bit longer with those guys."
Bertuzzi was exactly Penner's age - 27 - when he upped his career best from 25 to 36 goals. The next year he scored 46. Three months ago, the Oilers had Penner packaged up on his way to Ottawa, part of a deal for Dany Heatley. Make no mistake: they wanted the sniper Heatley, but the addition-by-subtraction element of the trade made it a no-lose deal for the Oilers.
Today, Dustin Penner might just be their best player.
It just might be he's finally figured it out.
