Malkin OK as “Other Guy”

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

Just about anywhere else in the NHL, Evgeni Malkin would be “The Guy.”

The captain. The unquestioned leader. The brightest star. The fulcrum around which to build a franchise.

Yet he has found comfort, peace and freedom in Pittsburgh, where the player everyone calls “Geno” has spent the last 11 years not as “The Guy” but “The Other Guy.” That’s not a slight. How can it be when the player a few stalls over in the dressing room happens to be a good friend and the best player in the world?

Sure, if he played in another market, Malkin would be the centerpiece. Why do that when you get to chase Stanley Cups every spring with Sidney Crosby?

“I don’t want to be No. 1 in Carolina,” Malkin said on the eve of Pittsburgh’s Stanley Cup Final date with Nashville. “I want to be better [with] Sid.”

And occasionally more dangerous than Sid.

It’s Malkin, not Crosby, who leads the league in scoring during the playoffs. The big Russian’s power-play goal in Pittsburgh’s 5-3 Game 1 victory over the Predators gave him 25 points in 20 games, just ahead of Crosby’s 22 in 19. If the Penguins find a way to fend off Nashville and raise the Cup for a second straight year and the third time in the Crosby and Malkin era, it could be Malkin who walks away with a second Conn Smythe Trophy as postseason MVP.

Not that Malkin is keeping track. Point out he won his Hart Trophy as NHL MVP in 2012 during a season in which Crosby was limited to just 22 games due to a concussion, Malkin shrugs. When he was left off the NHL’s list of 100 greatest players released at the All-Star Break, he cracked a couple of jokes and moved on.