PITTSBURGH — Sidney Crosby has been doing this for longer than Ben Kindel has been alive. Alex Ovechkin has, too, for that matter.
So yeah, it was maybe a little surreal for the Pittsburgh Penguins rookie forward, all of 18, to be on the ice Thursday night alongside the two players who have defined their franchises and in many ways the NHL for two decades and counting.
The calendar says it's 2025. Yet watching the 39-year-old Crosby score two goals to boost his season total to an NHL-leading 11 and have the 40-year-old Ovechkin collect two assists to fuel a second-period Washington rally in what eventually became a 5-3 Penguins victory, it was hard to tell.
“Kind of like the old Sid and Ovi rivalry there,” Kindel said after picking up the first two assists of his still very young career. "It was great to see and unreal to watch.”
That Crosby and Ovechkin found a way to summon a little something special during their 99th all-time meeting (playoffs included) is hardly surprising. The two future Hall of Famers have long had a habit of bringing out the best in each other.
What is surprising, however, is that for the first time in what seems like a long time — by the Penguins' standards at least — the game felt like it carried actual stakes.
New faces, new energy
The team considered a long shot to reach the playoffs when the season began — only woeful Chicago and San Jose faced slimmer odds of hoisting the Stanley Cup than Pittsburgh — finds itself tied with New Jersey for the top spot in the Metropolitan Division a month in.
Yes, it's not even Thanksgiving yet. And yes, the injuries are starting to pile up, from veteran forward Rickard Rakell to 6-foot-6 “power” forward Justin Brazeau, from goaltender Tristan Jarry to center Filip Hallander, who the team announced Friday is out at least three months because of a blood clot in his leg.
Still, the Penguins have been one of the NHL’s most pleasant early surprises.
A massive influx of fresh faces and fresh blood has brought an energy that was lacking as the team's run of three championships in nine years became an increasingly distant memory.
The arrival of first-year coach Dan Muse and his high-energy approach has provided a jolt. So has the emergence of teenagers Kindel and 19-year-old defenseman Harrison Brunicke, who has shown promise during an extended look before he likely returns to his junior team for a little more seasoning.
“They always give us juice,” said Penguins forward Bryan Rust, who at 33 is the fourth-longest tenured player on the team behind Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. “Obviously, they’re so excited to come in the rink and they’re having fun. They always got a smile on their face and they are also really, really good players. So I think that combination can really help a few of us older guys that have a little bit more fun, too.”
The organizational overhaul general manager Kyle Dubas began in earnest when he traded away popular two-time Stanley Cup winner Jake Guentzel at the deadline in the spring of 2024 is starting to bear fruit.
Pittsburgh's prospect pool is far deeper than when Dubas arrived in 2023, and one of them seems to have bypassed the “pool” entirely.
Kindel, taken with the 11th overall pick in this year's draft, made the club coming out of training camp and has five goals and two assists in 13 games. On Thursday night, he found himself on the first line with Rust and Crosby and earned a promotion to the top power play unit, where he held his own in a group featuring a a handful of players bound for the Hall of Fame.
“You can see he’s comfortable out there,” Muse said.
There's a lot of that going around. The Penguins have the league's second-ranked power play unit and have been buoyed by Jarry's apparent return to form after the two-time All-Star was demoted to the minors. While Jarry is out for at least three weeks with a lower-body injury, his absence will give the club a chance to see how close 21-year-old phenom Sergei Murashov is to being NHL-ready on a full-time basis.
While Kyle has pathologically avoided putting any sort of timetable on when the rebuild (a term he has never used) is complete, he did say at the start of training camp in September that he believes the Penguins can return to contender status while Crosby remains on the roster.
A good team?
There's a chance it might happen with Malkin, 39 and in the final year of his current contract with no sign of an extension on the horizon, still around, too.
The Russian star is tied for third in the NHL in points with 20, including 17 assists. His pretty cross-ice feed to Rust that Rust converted into the go-ahead goal midway through the third period against Washington helped Pittsburgh avoid a second straight late collapse.
On Monday night in Toronto, the Penguins dominated play for 40 minutes only to crumble in the final period as the Maple Leafs ripped off four straight goals to pull out a 4-3 win.
When Washington's Tom Wilson beat Arturs Silovs from his knees to tie it at 3 late in the second period on Thursday, it seemed the feel-good vibes the Penguins have been generating throughout the past month were on the verge of disappearing.
“It would have been really easy for this group to cave,” Muse said. "It would have been really easy for this group to play back on their heels, play worried.”
They didn't. They fended off a couple of Washington power plays, then pounced when Rust redirected Malkin's tape-to-tape pass and didn't let up the rest of the way.
Sure, it's still just early November. Yet for a team that looked lifeless for long stretches over the last couple of years of former head coach Mike Sullivan's otherwise highly successful tenure as the roster churned and the play of its stars (Crosby aside) sagged, it's a start.
“We’re finding ways to win games in a lot of different ways,” Rust said, later adding, “I think being able to win in all sorts of ways, I think, is a sign of a good team.”
Or at the very least, an interesting one.
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