Getting some recognition
Malkin putting together Hart Trophy-calibre season
Mike Babcock agrees, albeit somewhat begrudgingly, that Evgeni Malkin probably hasn’t received all the recognition he’s deserved throughout a career spent playing alongside fellow Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby.
The head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs also has a few reference points — including one that still probably gnaws at him — when discussing the Russian centre’s prowess.
“I think he won the Conn Smythe, if I’m not mistaken, in 2009,” Babcock said recently, a nod to Malkin’s playoff MVP performance for the Penguins that ended with a Stanley Cup final victory over Babcock’s Detroit Red Wings. “He’s been an all-star a number of times, so does he get as much (credit) as he might if he was by himself? No, but he wouldn’t win as much if he was by himself.
“So do you want the credit or do you want the wins?”
Malkin might be line for both this season with the surging Penguins hitting their stride after a pedestrian start. The two-time defending champions were 1110-3 on Nov. 24 and 19-18-3 when the calendar flipped to 2018, but have gone 21-8-1 since while averaging a league-high 3.93 goals per game.
And Malkin is a big reason for that surge.
The 31-year-old sat second in NHL scoring heading into Monday with 87 points, one back of Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov, while his 39 goals had him one adrift of Washington’s Alex Ovechkin and Winnipeg’s Patrik Laine in the race for the Rocket Richard Trophy.
Malkin tops the NHL in goals (25) and points (51) since Jan. 1 — Crosby is second with 41 points — and has an eye-popping 18 goals and 20 assists in his last 20 games. He was named the NHL’s third star of the week Monday after putting up three goals and five assists in four games, with his three points over the weekend moving him past Pavel Datsyuk and into fifth on the NHL’s alltime scoring list among Russian players with 919 points.
But while Malkin’s numbers are similar to Crosby’s on a points-per-game basis over their careers — 1.29 to 1.19 — he’s always seemed, at least on the outside, to fit the role of Robin to the Cole Harbour native’s Batman.
Not so for anyone close to the team, according to Pittsburgh head coach Mike Sullivan.
“In our dressing room he gets a lot of credit,” he said. “We have some difference makers in there, some elite players. Geno and Sid are two of them.
“Those of us that are inside our locker-room are so appreciative of what these guys bring.”