Pittsburgh Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin Not the Problem
Evgeni Malkin has been back in the lineup for exactly one game, since missing over a month with an injury. That one game was a loss. People are, expectedly, panicking.
Sports fans have never been known for their calmness. We’re all prone to overreacting and advocating for extreme solutions when the tiniest thing doesn’t go our team’s way. Even when we have low expectations, the slightest bump in the road can throw all that out the window.
Pittsburgh Penguins fans are not exempt from that. In fact, depending on who you ask, we’re some of the worst at jumping to extraordinary conclusions.
That’s not something I’m going to try to argue. Earlier in the year, when the Pens were struggling mightily, there was an absurd amount of people calling for Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby to be traded.
Reminder: when you have two of the best players in the world on your team, there are very few things that could prompt the front office to trade one, let alone both. Crosby and Malkin are one of the most dynamic duos in the league on top of that sheer talent, and splitting them up would be nothing short of beheading the “Two-Headed Monster.”
Crosby’s accelerated play in the second half of the season has silenced most doubters. But Malkin, who missed over a month of play at the end of the season with an injury, has become the target of trade-focused pundits again.
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Malkin has been back in the lineup for one game. One. And that game just happened to be a loss in which the entire Pittsburgh roster played poorly.
So naturally, the thing to do is call for his head on a platter. It’s definitely Geno’s fault that the hottest team in the league collapsed for a single game, right? How dare he mess up the chemistry of the second line (which, it’s important to realize, stayed together even in his return). How dare he not make every pass perfectly when he’s returning from a hand or wrist injury weeks earlier than he was predicted to.
Darn it, Geno. You and your speedy recovery are costing us the playoffs.
I’ve seen more tweets and comments from people telling other fans not to be dumb about this than from people who are actually advocating for Geno to be benched again. There’s probably at least two or three “if you want to healthy-scratch Malkin in the playoffs you’re an absolute idiot” tweets for every “Malkin is ruining everything” comment – and that’s good.
It’s also good that none of us are actually behind the bench in Pittsburgh. What chaos that would be.
We are two games into the first round of the playoffs. We are going into Madison Square Garden with a series split 1-1, with our third-string goalie having started both games so far and a fierce rivalry throwing a wrench into how we might usually play. We are fine.
Whatever problems the Penguins have right now, Malkin is not the be-all end-all source or result of them. For all the Pens’ struggles in game two, Geno came out swinging. The whole team made bad mistakes and lacked the drive they need to win.
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There’s no rationale for benching a healthy Malkin after one game (or pretty much ever). We knew that, upon his return, the lines would have to be shuffled a bit and the ever-important chemistry would be disrupted. And they did.
Good. We’ve gotten that out of the way. Let’s keep Malkin in and go win some more games now.