Gene Collier: Malkin opens by finding an opening

Thursday, October 19, 2006
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

When they talk about obvious scoring opportunities in the National Hockey League, the scorer's mind flashes to a small opening in the goaltender's imposing posture, a target about the size of a flank steak, a spot through which you can light the lamp only if you hit it dead on.

Save for the random occasions on which the goaltender is out of position due to bursts of offensive pressure, the obvious scoring opportunity is usually obvious solely to the shooter and probably only applicable if his confidence is rolling.

Thus the delicious little circumstance around Evgeni Malkin's first National Hockey League goal was something else entirely.

When the great Martin Brodeur has just fallen on a shot from his doorstep like a Doberman collapsing on a bouncing bone, no one expects anything resembling offensive opportunity, but the expectations around Malkin apparently aren't through the never-retracted retractable Mellon Arena roof for nothing.

A second after dropping a pass to right wing Mark Recchi, Malkin elevated his debut performance to something near mystical, sweeping past Brodeur to inspect a non-rebound of Recchi's shot under the sprawled Devils' netminder, and somehow poking it the length of Brodeur's sprawled musculature across the goal line and into Pittsburgh legend.

"Evgeni and Sid [Crosby, last year's even-more-hotly anticipated Penguins phenom] have totally different styles," Recchi said. "Sid is just a damned spark plug. He's explosive, sick explosive. Malkin is more like Mario. He's big, a great skater, has great vision, and he can finish. He's got an edge to his game."

Something in that edge then, must be able to make him think he can poke a stick at that thing beneath Brodeur.

"Recchi gave me a good pass," Malkin said through an interpreter late last night. "I gave it back to him and he shot it. It came up on Brodeur and I just shot it."

Well, sort of.

Malkin's goal, coming late in the second period, punctuated a months-long drama that began with an escape to North America through an equally unlikely opening somewhere in the Helsinki Airport. Between then and last night, too much of Malkin's existence had played out like an implausible foreign film.

"Skill-wise, he's had an easier time getting to the NHL than the rest of us," Recchi was saying last night. "But, when you consider what he's had to go through to get here and the pressure put on him back home, on his parents, it's incredible.

"I've heard horror stories, the Russian mob, the mafia, whatever you want to call it."

Even as Malkin was arriving at Mellon Arena last night, his former Russian team was filing a lawsuit against the Penguins and the NHL, claiming breach of contract. Legal precedent consistently has held that Malkin is free under applicable labor law provisions.

Though a scoreless and largely lifeless first period sapped it of any special electricity, this was a hockey night in Pittsburgh perhaps like no other, because whether Evgeni Malkin is the next Sidney Crosby or the next Mario Lemieux or merely a player of his own singular definition, he already has done something those cross-generational Penguins icons did not.

He started his NHL career on home ice, and, even though the supportive crowd's early buzz was more indicative of a much-anticipated theater opener than a typical Atlantic Division slap-off, and while Malkin didn't score on his first shift, as Lemieux did at Boston in 1984, or even very nearly score on his first shift, as Crosby did last October in East Rutherford, N.J., it actually appeared he had either gotten his first or at least his first assist late in the first period.

Dropping a pass back to Ryan Whitney at the right point, Malkin swung into position in front of Brodeur as Whitney wound up to fire the slapper. Malkin redirected Whitney's laser, and, while it looked to the naked eye (strategically positioned a city block away 500 feet above the ice surface) that Malkin's redirect flicked the New Jersey net, it actually hit the post.

Few among the non-Russian speaking population in the Penguins' locker room (everybody but Sergei Gonchar) can fully appreciate what it meant for Malkin to be on an NHL ice surface last night, but it had to help Evgeni that the guy skating Malkin's right wing had exactly 1,261 times the NHL experience as the 20-year-old phenom from Magnitogorsk.

"He's a goofball on the ice; that's really his element, his comfort zone," Recchi said. "But off the ice he seems very mature."

(Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283. )