PITTSBURGH _ Third period. Tie game. And Kris Letang nonchalantly makes a Dallas Stars team that would play in the Stanley Cup Final look like a bunch of beer-leaguers who got the party started in the PPG Paints Arena parking lot before the game.
After the Penguins win an offensive zone faceoff to him at the point, the All-Star defenseman kicks the puck onto his stick as an opponent comes screaming at him. Letang takes a quick step and a quick look then snaps a pass between two Stars wingers. Hit a shin guard there and maybe it's a 2-on-1 the other way.
A moment later, the puck skitters back out to him. Letang fakes a shot, causing one defender to do a belly flop. He pulls the puck around him then gets another dude to drop with a similar flick of the stick.
Somebody better cut these guys off.
Skating backward now, Letang leaves those two guys in the dust, pivots so he can cut toward the crease, then slams the puck between the goalie's pads.
"You see him and you kind of want to do the same thing," teammate Marcus Pettersson said after that Oct. 18 win. "But not a lot of us can do that."
Not many defensemen have the stones to try it in a moment like that, either.
For nearly 15 years now, Letang has tiptoed along that fine line for the Penguins, establishing himself as one of the most productive and entertaining defensemen of this generation. There have certainly been plenty of plays like that, when dazzle turned to danger and the red light flickered on in Pittsburgh's end.
Those mental miscues have been more prevalent in recent seasons as he coasts into the twilight of his career. And some puck pundits would argue that a wave of talented young defenders has blown by Letang, who turned 33 in April.
Do the rewards still outweigh the risks? And is he still one of the NHL's best?
While certain areas of his game have shown decline, both advanced statistics and analysts who recently spoke to the Post-Gazette suggest that Letang is, as NHL Network analyst Ken Daneyko put it, "still pretty darned good."
"He's maybe not elite anymore, maybe not quite what he was at his peak. But he's still a good skater and puck-mover," said Daneyko, the ex-Devils defenseman who won three Cups with New Jersey. "Look at the numbers last year."
