Playoff intensity could be lost if season resumes for Penguins, NHL

Conditioned by a fistful of championship runs over the past three decades, Penguins fans know the deal by now.

Yeah, hockey season starts in October, but really, the games that matter start at the beginning of April.

If it hadn’t been for the coronavirus pandemic suspending play, the Penguins would have wrapped up their regular season Sunday night in Ottawa and would have been preparing for their playoff opener, likely against the hated Philadelphia Flyers, probably Wednesday night.

That’s when emotions would begin to run high. That’s when the physical intensity of play would double or triple. That’s when the electricity in the arena would be palpable.

As it stands, it’s hard to say how intense the hockey will be when — or if — the chase for the Stanley Cup resumes.

Reading the latest tea leaves — and the reading changes frequently — the most plausible non-doomsday scenario would see the NHL jump right into the playoffs once players are able to safely return to the ice sometime in the summer.

According to recent reports, the NHL has been mulling a plan where groups of teams would hunker down in a handful of regional neutral sites — North Dakota and New Hampshire have been mentioned — and play multiple rounds in the same empty building.

Could a series played under those conditions carry the same emotional weight a playoff matchup normally would?

Winger Bryan Rust isn’t so sure.

“Home-ice advantage, that aspect of the game might be taken out of it,” Rust said. “The ability to ride the momentum of the crowd, even during the regular season, but it’s amplified so much more during the playoffs when the crowd gets on your side. You have a big shift or a big play or something, and you just kind of ride that momentum.”

Rust is a bit of an expert when it comes to playoff momentum.

The Penguins have won nine of the 11 playoff series Rust has appeared in. He scored in five of the nine series clinchers, netting the winning goal four times.

One clincher provides a perfect example of the emotional wave Rust referred to.

In Game 5 of a first-round series with Columbus in 2017, the Penguins held a 1-0 lead on Columbus after one period. Rust scored early in the second, then — boom — scored again less than three minutes later. The Penguins were off and running to a 5-2 series-ending win on home ice.

There are other Penguins players, of course, with a track record of success when games are at their most intense.

Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, a pair of Conn Smythe Trophy winners, are 1-2 on the NHL’s list of active playoff scorers. Crosby has 186 postseason points, and Malkin has 168.

But scroll down just one more spot on that list, passing up Joe Thornton and his 133 points, and there sits Patrick Marleau with 127. The crown jewel of the Penguins’ trade deadline acquisitions has quite a bit of playoff pedigree himself.

Then look at the list of active points-per-game leaders in the Stanley Cup playoffs. There’s Crosby (1.13) and Malkin (1.04) again in the top five, but between them sits Jake Guentzel (1.05). Easy to see why the idea of Guentzel being healed up from his shoulder injury by the time hockey resumes has some in black and gold getting a little giddy.

Under normal circumstances, Penguins fans would be packing PPG Paints Arena at some point in the next few days, expecting to see those clutch players performing under hockey’s brightest lights.

As it stands now, who knows?

“I think in an empty building, there wouldn’t be as much of that,” Rust said. “You have to try to create your own energy. That definitely would play a factor.”