Tim Benz: Penguins defensemen embrace cliches as playoffs loom

It’s playoff time. So that means all aspects of a hockey player’s game should rise.

Their skating. Hitting. Defensive intensity.

And cliché usage.

That’s right. As the stakes rise, so do the amount of regurgitated, empty quotes.

Hockey locker rooms usually win the cliché battle among the four major sports as it is. This truth becomes even more apparent once the playoff brackets are solidified.

Nary an inflammatory soundbite. Rare are useful insights.

I’ve always found, though, that most of the clichés tend to be about the forwards. Don’t they?

“Gotta go to the dirty areas to score goals.”

“Players have to be on top of the blue paint to make the goalie uncomfortable.”

“We must win battles deep beyond the other team’s goal line.”

“Can’t get too fancy making passes through the neutral zone and looking to score on the rush.”

And so forth. And so on. And on. And on. Until June.

If we’re … lucky?

But how about defensemen? What are the clichés for defensemen this time of year that the coaches pound into their heads in film study and that are propagated through the media?

“Support your forwards a lot in the offensive zone,” Penguins defenseman Olli Maatta said when I asked him that question. “When you lose a puck, have a good gap. And breaking out is a huge thing. All the (playoff) teams have a good forecheck. If you can break out clean, it’s really helpful.”

Ding. Ding. And ding. Spoken like a man with 68 playoff games under his belt.

Erik Gudbranson has been on the blue line for only 13 playoff games. Those came with Florida in 2012 and 2016. But he echoes Maatta’s summation.

“You have to be patient. Do the little things,” the 27-year-old Gudbranson said. “Manage the game extremely well. Manage the puck really well.”

Manage the puck. Be patient. Do the little things. We’re knee-deep now.

Kidding aside, clichés become clichés for a reason. The need to heed those messages resonates because they are valid. Gudbranson and Maatta are speaking the truth, tediously mundane though it may be.

Frankly, as Gudbranson expanded, “tediously mundane” could be an excellent way to describe playoff hockey at times.

Don’t confuse tension for excitement.

“In the playoffs, there can be lulls where you have five or six shifts where you aren’t really creating anything,” Gudbranson said. “Just pushing pucks up the walls. It’s a hard game to play. A very tight game.”

Even though Marcus Pettersson had played in only four playoff games on defense for Anaheim before arriving in Pittsburgh, he probably offered the best perspective on this topic.

As he described it, clichés for the forwards become clichés for the defensemen by extension.

“There’s give and take there,” Pettersson said with a smile. “Forwards go to the net harder. So it’s coming to us harder.”

As Pettersson outlined, the forwards are going to want to get the puck deep.

“So keep the play in front of you.”

The forechecks are going to be strong.

“So don’t force plays.”

Well, if the Islanders forwards understand what the Penguins blue line is thinking and the Penguins defense seems to grasp what the Islanders approach may be, we are going to see seven scoreless — or 1-1 — games entering overtime.

Who knows. That prediction may not be too far off.

If they play to win and give 110 percent.

And bring their A-game.

Because defense wins championships.