PITTSBURGH — You don’t get to June whole: That’s one of the larger lessons that you can draw from the Stanley Cup Playoffs and the Stanley Cup Final in particular.
We’ve seen it before. We saw it last year when Trevor Daley was among those who went down and he came out of the stands with a cast on his ankle to raise the Cup.
No matter who wins out in June, a key player will come on the ice in street clothes to pose for the team picture and get his hands on the silverware. If it’s Pittsburgh it will be defenceman Kris Letang, the team’s No. 1 blueliner. If it’s Nashville, it will be Ryan Johansen, who is your No. 1 or 1A centre. No matter who wins, there will likely be others forced out of action by injury.
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You can talk about depth, but don’t imagine that guys who skate in optional practices are options themselves to take the place of a wounded frontline player. It’s too much to ask an erstwhile Black Ace to step into the breach of a Letang or a Johansen.
“It just goes to show what our team is all about,” Daley said of the Penguins’ ability to get through three playoff series with not a game from Letang who is recovering from neck surgery. “We’ve always found a way with guys out of the lineup to get the job done, no matter which guy it was. When Sid goes out we found a way to win.”
Daley was talking about Sidney Crosby being hors de combat with a concussion for Game 4 of Pittsburgh’s second-round series against Washington, when the Penguins held on for an improbable win over the Capitals (albeit not quite as improbable as the Game 1 win over the Predators).
Pittsburgh managed to get through two rounds without goalie Matt Murray, the designated No. 1 who didn’t make it through warmups in the first game of the post-season versus Columbus. Marc-Andre Fleury stepped in and played like it was old times for a few weeks — and when he couldn’t sustain it, predictably, Murray was good to go.
The Predators lost left-winger Kevin Fiala with a fractured femur in their series against St Louis. That hole on the roster was patched up with the return of players from infirmary; Calle Jarnkrok, and Craig Smith among others.
And who knows who is playing through what at this point. Just look at those whose teams have bowed out and come clean about injuries. Ottawa’s Erik Karlsson, the most impressive player of all this spring, was pretty well pogo-ing around the ice with a fractured foot. Nazem Kadri’s big hit on Alex Ovechkin hyperextended a knee and inflicted such a catastrophic wound on the Capitals star that he didn’t go to the worlds.
Letang met with the press corps at the Penguins’ training facility Tuesday afternoon and seemed in good spirits. He said that he started working out and snuck out on skates at some point. For Letang, Johansen and Fiala, you have to imagine that in some ways having no chance of returning somehow simplifies things for them.
“I was really confident the team could go all the way and win it again,” Letang said. “When you have your leader like Sid, you have Geno [Malkin], the core group is just unbelievable players, they care for each other. When you have those types of guys on your team, you know you have a chance.”
Letang revealed a greater truth in that statement: His place on the blue line was filled by a defenceman who’d been skating with the Black Aces, but in the greater scheme of things his place on team as a whole has been filled by Nos. 87 and 71.
For the Preds, losing Johansen and Fiala means that they must ask for more from their deep blue line. If you can’t get it done with the way that you had hoped because of injury, find another way of getting it done.
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