Penguins present powerful concerns for Maple Leafs
Ron Hainsey didn’t require much time as a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins — less than four months last season, culminating with a Stanley Cup title — to earn a deeper respect for the abilities of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel.
Nearly a year after Hainsey was traded to the Penguins by the Carolina Hurricanes, and nearly eight months after he left the Penguins to sign with the Maple Leafs as a free agent, Hainsey remains wary of the Penguins and how they can bring damage, especially on the power play.
It’s one area, of several, of concern for the Leafs, who will put their fivegame winning streak on the line Saturday night in Pittsburgh against a Penguins team that has won 10 consecutive games at home.
“The pre-scout is not all that effective because they kind of wing it, some of their guys they just go out there and feel it and make it happen,” Hainsey said after Leafs practice on Friday at the MasterCard Centre.
“It’s a big challenge. Best-case scenario is you don’t take any penalties. That’s not always 100 per cent realistic, but that will be the goal and hopefully if you give them one or two cracks, they don’t get to set up, too adjusted. If they get three or four (opportunities), the stats say they are going to score at least one.”
The Penguins are clipping along at a 26.6 per cent success rate on the power play, tops in the National Hockey League. Kessel had an NHL-high 33 power-play points before games on Friday, Crosby was second with 30 and Malkin fourth with 29.
In the bigger picture, while the Leafs have won nine of their past 10 games to keep pace in the Atlantic Division with the Boston Bruins and the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Penguins have won eight of their past 10 to solidify second place in the Metropolitan Division.
The Leafs had a day off on Thursday before getting back on the ice on Friday, and they remained ticked with their performance on Wednesday against the Columbus Blue Jackets. To win, the Leafs needed a career-high 54 saves by Frederik Andersen, ensuring that Nazem Kadri’s first five-point night in the NHL didn’t go to waste.
“Any time you get going good and you are playing good, human nature is things start slipping and sometimes you get away with more than you should and that (night) was probably one of them,” Leafs coach Mike Babcock said. “We were in the (defensive zone) too much. We went through that (Friday) in our video session. We have to work way harder and compete harder and sort things out in our own zone.”
That approach will be imperative against Crosby and his high-octane friends. Crosby has 25 goals and 31 assists in 38 career games against the Leafs, and though he has been an offensive menace since recording 102 points as an 18-year-old rookie in 2005-06, the awe factor when pondering Crosby still goes a long way for Leafs veterans.
“I think you really get an appreciation for how smart he is,” winger James van Riemsdyk said. “He has all the skill and stuff like that — but the puck seems to always find him in those situations and people think that that’s lucky, but that’s by no accident.
“He plays a way that is a little bit different, I would say, than most guys, but he is so successful because he is so smart. He knows the right places to be on the ice.”
Though Babcock jokingly suggested he scouted the Penguins by watching on TV from his table at a downtown Italian restaurant on Thursday night as Pittsburgh beat the Los Angeles Kings, the coach knows the perils that the back-toback Cup champs bring forward.
Starting with the Penguins’ special teams, specifically, their power play.
“A little discipline (on the part of the Leafs) will go a long way,” Babcock said. “If you skate good and put pressure on the other team, you’re not in position to take as many penalties. That will be our priority.”