DK's Daily Shot of Penguins: What a knockout that was! And not just for Elmer Soderblom!

0:00Wow, I mean just wow, in the lifetime of either watching, covering this franchise, I'm sure that at some point I saw eight unanswered goals. I am also sure that I never would have seen it against this Nemesis. Good morning to you. Good Tuesday morning from Elmont, New York. I'm Dan Kovacovich of DK Pittsburgh Sports. And this is daily shot of penguins. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you're into football and or baseball, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Pirates in the same place that you found this penguin's eight Islanders 3 here last night at UBS Arena.

1:05New York had a 3-to-1 lead. Archer Shilov is a little shaky. There was momentum, a plenty for the home team. And then eight goals happened to the goal tender who I believe. And still believe should win the Vezanotrophy. Ilius Serokin of course. What ended up undoing that New York lead was the will and the skill of the visitors in the house. Give full credit where it's deserved. This was a game that penguins felt they had to have. This was a game that the standings strongly suggested they had to have. And they're down by two in somebody else's house facing a team that has just tormented them as an organization for half a century now.

2:11They knew and they came through. Anthony Mantle with two gorgeous goals. Ricard Raquel with two goals of his own and they weren't exactly bad either. Justin Brzo with three, count them three primary assists. Elmer Soderblum with the penguins first goal of the night. And their biggest fight really of the year. And taking down Scott Mayfield in the third period. Just really, really impressive. I asked Brzo how much it meant to the team. How much does it mean to you guys? Yeah, it's a big one. I mean, at this time of year, every point is big especially. It's not a big one like that. I'm pretty happy with kind of the way we responded to everything clearly. I don't know if we were in another game but they came out pretty hard. I thought we had a really good job weathering it and this kind of thing that we met them. This was Mantle on the same subject. It was a very important game for us for our team and I get everyone showed up.

3:11Around the room, the intonation sounded like that too. There wasn't any gosh wow, there wasn't music blasting. There weren't guys whooping it up over their big rally and splattering those guys all over the ice. They felt that's the way that game should have gone. They felt that's the way it should have wound up. And they followed through on what they felt. My friends, if there is one trait that this collection of hockey players has above all others and in abundance, it is this. They don't think they're good. They know they're good. That's what made them quietly impervious to all the knocks and everything else that they were. Seeing, hearing and reading last summer, although I'll repeat for you now, what I was saying then, which is that 99% of that was just a pile of steaming crap coming down from Canada,

4:15suggesting that the team was still going to trade Raquel and Brian Rust and my goodness, even Sid, Gino and everything else. So there was a perception created that this was a team that still has to hit bottom. That perception, as I was informing you last summer from the inside, was never accurate. They knew that, so they entered training camp with the correct information and the right mindset. When they opened the season with that three nothing shut out of the Rangers at Madison Square Garden, they didn't celebrate excessively that one either. And I'll vividly recall Sid saying to me, that night, this isn't it. We can get a lot better than this. And he surprisingly, right, was correct as well. You know, it's not over. So I don't want to take things too far.

5:16Whenever they clinched their little X in the standings and they're back in the tournament again, especially for the first time in a way too long by their standards, I'll find a way to go on about that at that time. As it is, they've got work to do. They've got work to do tonight, back home. The red wings, along with the senators, are really the, those are the teams that they need to shoe out of the picture, or at least help shoe out of the picture. Why? Because they're both four points back. And they're both tied for ninth in the Eastern Conference with only eight, of course, making it. But don't underestimate or underplay what happened here last night either, because without it. These mathematical scenarios I'd be throwing at you right now.

6:17On this episode would be so different, not to mention the vibe and the whole feel thing that I was describing earlier. When we come back, J1Q. Today's J1Q comes from Kevin. He says, TK, easy one here. Does Kyle Dubas bring Anthony Manta back? Or has Manta priced himself out of the penguins plans for the future? Before the season, this question would have been absurd, and now I'm not so sure. Okay, well then why did you call this an easy question? You think this is easy? I have no idea why you'd think it's easy. I mean, I guess purely from the follower of the franchise perspective, of course you'd want him back. But you've also got to understand that he is due to be an unrestricted free agent.

7:23And this is 100% in his control, and that's something that as a player you work a long, long time for that status. You play for the better part of your life under somebody else's rules, somebody else's restrictions. And the one time you kind of get to go shopping is when you get to your late 20s or your early 30s. Manta is going to make a big chunk of change somewhere. Why? Because these two goals took him to 29 for the season. He's never had more than 25. He's 31 years old. He's coming off of a major knee reconstruction. And he's largely done what he's done in Pittsburgh being properly respectful here.

8:24Without the benefit of any of the resident superstars, he hasn't been on power play one really hardly at all. He's been mostly part of a second or even a third line that's at times had an 18 year old at center, and a reclamation project over on right wing, meaning just in Brazil. He's also generated offense from any and all positions, including both wings. Now, you bring up the potential cost of an extension. I don't think it's the cost of the extension that would put off Dubas here. I think it's the time element along with how that time element matches up against the rest of the age of the roster or the portion of the roster that's younger.

9:27In other words, can Mantha be a fit with Kindle in I don't know four or five years seems unlikely? Is it going to take four or five years to get a deal done with Mantha? I sure would think so. So it's not as simple as do the penguins have the cap space. It's definitely not as simple as do they like him or even does he like it here. Now, I say all this and if Mantha were to approach Dubas and say, hey man, I've bounced around a good bit in my career. I really like it here. I love the team, love you guys, enjoy the way I've been appreciated in this city and let's make something work. Then you can have a conversation. But if this is the way it usually goes in sports, most of your conversations happen with your agent as opposed to your general manager.

10:27That would only be 100% of players in that event. Then they're going to be letting him know probably on a daily basis what his market would look like this summer as an NHL free agent. They'd be giving him real numbers, real projections based on real precedent and the cap expanding. And it's not like he'd feel as if he owes something to the penguins because he and they signed his current one year 2.5 million dollar contract. And I'm going to guess that at no point over the past few months did Dubas pull Mantha aside and say, hey, I love what you've done for us. Here's an additional 3 or 4 million for the way you scored. It doesn't work like that. It's a business. It's a business on both sides of it. I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of penguins.

11:32We'll be back with another one of these tomorrow.