Letang finds game again after early woes

Mike Sullivan and Kris Letang sat down for a conversation in early September.

Letang, then five months removed from the neck surgery that cost him most of the 2016-17 season, only had been back on the ice in equipment, at full speed, for a few weeks.

Sullivan thought it was important to manage expectations a bit and told Letang the Penguins didn’t expect him to be at the top of his game right offthe bat.

Letang took the comment in stride but admitted he didn’t quite believe Sullivan at first.

Now, though, he understands what Sullivan meant.

“When you’re fit, conditioning-wise, you think it’s going to be all right, but it was not,” Letang said Monday. “A hockey game, back-to-back games, travel, it adds up, and it was hard. It was a long time without playing, without training. I didn’t believe him at first, but it made sense.

“I think it’s been a long road, but it’s getting better. It’s not going the other way. It’s positive, and I think I can still improve my game.”

After an up-and-down first few months to this season, Letang seems to have found his game recently. He has three goals and six assists in his past 10 games and has posted a plus-9 plus/minus over that span. He was not on the ice for any of the Bruins’ goals Thursday in an 8-4 loss.

His season-long plus/minus, which fell as low as minus-16 at various points, is up to minus-6. While it’s certainly an imperfect stat, it does seem to track with Letang’s overall turnaround.

He knows his first few months weren’t up to par, a frustrating stretch he now attributes to a longer-than-expected-recovery process.

“If I miss eight months, it didn’t allow me to train,” Letang said. “I was only allowed to skate the last week of the summer. I had a lot of catching up to do, and the bad thing about it was that it was during the season when I had to do it. I think I was a work in progress.”

Even throughout that process, Letang would show flashes of the player he could be — and has been for most of his career. He could have six points in four games, as he did in early December, but in the same games get caught pinching up and allowing an oddman rush the other way.

“It was not so much, ‘Oh, I can’t play anymore,’” he said. “It was lapses. It was one good shift, one bad one, one good shift. At the end of the day, people remember — and I remember— my bad shifts.

“But I was totally capable of doing the job. I was able to be myself, but it was just a question of doing it for 60 minutes and being committed to the details.”

It helped Letang that the Penguins were 100 percent committed to him as their top defenseman. Even through his struggles and rough patches, he kept getting the same heavy workload he has throughout his career. Letang played less than 20 minutes just once this season (Nov. 10 at Washington), and his 25:20 per game is the eighth-highest average ice time in the NHL.

“Sully, obviously, he kept playing me,” Letang said. “He knew I’m the type of guy that builds up a workload and that’s how I get better. He kept having confidence I would improve my game by playing me and playing the minutes I should be playing. I think that wasthe biggest thing.”

From Sullivan’s perspective, there was never any question of dialing back Letang’s workload. Yes, he made cede a power-play shift to Justin Schultz here and there, but the Penguins want Letang at his best — his 25minutes-a-night best — heading into the postseason.

“There was never a time that we questioned it because he’s so important to this team, and we knew in the big picture it was important to allow him to play through it,” Sullivan said. “That’s what we were trying to do with him, give him an opportunity to play through it. He had some good games for us, he had some games where we knew he could be better.

“I think what was important is that, as his coaching staff, we had to keep it in perspective and help him manage his own emotional level going throughthe process.”

That meant meetings such as the one in early September, as well as frequent reminders to play a simple, smart game. Letang is capable of making plays few players in the league can, but he doesn’t need to do iton every shift.

“He’s talking like when there’s absolutely no play to be made, don’t try to, like he says all the time, ‘sell the farm,’” Letang said. “Sometimes I’ll try to do a play when I should just chip it in, avoid the hits, stuff like that. That’s wha the means.”

Letang has been doing more of that recently. With the benefit of hindsight, he can make an honest admission about that sit-down with Sullivan five months ago.

“He was right, and now I’m starting to play a little bit better,” Letang said. “Hopefully I’m going to hit my best strides whenwe get into the playoffs.”

Letang’s expectations, once carefully managed, now can afford to grow. Ultimately, the way this season has played out might say more about the bar Letang sets for himself than anything else.

“I think that’s what makes him one of the best,” Olli Maatta said. “He’s almost always expecting himself to playa perfect game every time he goes out there. It sounds crazy, but he knows how good hecan be.”

“I think it’s been a long road, but it’s getting better.”

— Kris Letang, on recovering from neck surgery