Flyers-Penguins not rivalry it used to be

PITTSBURGH - The names were hard to hate, mostly because you'd never heard of them before. It had been 291 days since the Flyers had upped their winning streak against the Penguins to eight, and the indifference that names such as Olli Maatta, Ben Dumoulin and Bryan Rust evoked when the teams finally met Thursday night was not overwhelmed by any plays or shenanigans of their more recognized and despised stars.

Yes, Sidney Crosby scored an impossible wide-angle goal that harkened to his Olympic gold-medal winner and Evgeni Malkin did his puck-possession magic at times, despite Scott Laughton and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare doing their best to fill in for injured Sean Couturier - Malkin's regular blanket since these teams last met in a playoff game nearly four years ago.

And Phil Kessel, another old Olympic hero, brought Pittsburgh all the way back from a 2-0, first-period hole, knocking in a loose puck during one of an endless string of power plays to grab the lead, scoring an even-strength 2-on-1 in the third period for the deciding goal of a 4-3, defense-to-the-wind Penguins victory.

But damn, Phil never bothered us much when he was with Toronto. Plus, he's U-S-A, U-S-A.

At least until Thursday night.

When Kessel finished a 2-on-1 to confirm the comeback, he became, officially, one of them.

As much as there is any Them these days.

Really, he did nothing for us to not like him. No one did, really. There were a couple of harmless scrums, and Radko Gudas seemed to extract extra pleasure knocking around Malkin anytime he could, but that's something that must trace back to the their Czech vs. Russia days, since it was the first time they played each other wearing the sweaters of this state.

"There was still some big hits, good hits, but as far as the spirited stuff after the whistle or fights, there wasn't much of that," said Brayden Schenn, who scored the game's first goal and missed on two great chances to tie the game, the second with only five seconds remaining.

"Maybe first meeting of the year and new guys on the teams. I guess we'll see what happens on the next one . . . or the third, fourth . . . "

The Penguins entered the game a single point ahead of the Flyers in the crowded Eastern Conference race, their own early-season struggles resulting in the firing of a head coach and speculation about Crosby's future as a player and as a Penguin. No, these are teams searching for new identities these days, their stars fighting themselves as much as they are battling any team, historic rivals included.

Sid entered the game just slightly more productive than Claude Giroux, uttering the same rhetoric about finding their game and building chemistry among unfamiliar parts.

"As a team, we have a lot of new faces," Crosby said recently. "So kind of building that new identity, that trust . . . it's really important."

Unlike Giroux, none of his new faces is an All-Star-level playmaking defenseman with a cannon for a shot. The Flyers took a 2-0, first-period lead with Shayne Gostisbehere at the point for two power-play goals, creating an open-net rebound for Schenn with a blast, initiating a tic-tac-toe play that Jakub Voracek finished off for the second.

That score masked a game of ebbs and flows, masked what seemed to be shaping up to be a subpar effort by Giroux. Dead legs, under the weather, whatever it was, the Flyers captain simply did not have the jump he is accustomed to, and the results were some missed opportunities and uneven play.

He was far from alone. A particularly horrific shift by Ryan White late in the initial period that featured him teeing one up for Sid in the slot ended with him off for slashing, and ignited Pittsburgh's second period, when the hosts scored three unanswered goals, two on the power play.

Midway through the third period, that fourth line, which includes Chris VandeVelde and Bellemare, looked like the hockey version of the Washington Generals, chasing the puck all over their own zone. A 27-year-old career journeyman, White will likely not be part of this rivalry when and if it ever cooks up again. Probably not his journeymen linemates either. Ghost is, of course, an integral part of any future it has. Like the Flyers, the Penguins have undergone big-time upheaval in their front office and behind the bench since the teams last met in a playoff game.

It's a long time. Arron Asham and Craig Adams are retired, and James Neal plays for Nashville. All were suspended in that contentious first-round series, the one in which then-Flyers coach Peter Laviolette deemed Giroux "The Best Player in the World," and the last time, really, that the Flyers were good enough to have bona fide bad guys playing for the other side.

These days, it's more about getting good enough again than about reheating any rivalry.

Which is a good thing, because Thursday neither team did much to convince you that rivalry will be anything more than room temperature anytime soon.

Email: donnels@phillynews.com

On Twitter: @samdonnellon

Columns: ph.ly/Donnellon