Malkin had worked to develop that sort of ownership with Michel Therrien, his first NHL head coach after coming to North America for the 2006-07 season. In 2007-08, when the Penguins advanced to the Stanley Cup Final and lost to Detroit in six games, Malkin and Therrien met constantly throughout the year.<\/p>\n
Therrien wanted Malkin to know how special he was, that his potential was off the charts with so much size, skill and scoring ability, and that he could be as impactful as Crosby.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to say thank you to him. He gave me a lot,\u201d Malkin has said of Therrien. \u201cHe tried to speak with me, like, every day, and tell me you need to be a top-five player in the NHL every year, not just when you\u2019re a rookie. You need to win everything, like Hart Trophy, Art Ross, Conn Smythe Trophy. He would tell me this every day. He\u2019d tell me you need to work so hard every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, while it was difficult for Malkin when Therrien was relieved of his duties that February and got replaced by Dan Bylsma, he understood that it was the spark the team needed to get back into the playoff picture. They ended up with a first-round matchup against cross-state rival Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
Malkin had multi-point efforts in each of the first three games, scoring once in Game 1, once in Game 2, and twice in Game 3. But in Malkin\u2019s opinion, he had a slow start against the Flyers, which is perhaps a testament to the sky-high level of play he knew he could reach.<\/p>\n
He was held out of the goal column in the second half of that six-game series, and for the first two games of the Second Round against Washington, both losses.<\/p>\n
But Malkin found the back of the net in Game 3, a 3-2 overtime victory for Pittsburgh, and scored the overtime winner himself in Game 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just took over, a little later in the series,\u201d said Max Talbot, who was teammates with Malkin for the first five seasons of the Russian forward\u2019s career. \u201cHe ended up winning the Conn Smythe, but it\u2019s (playing) against Washington that really got him going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malkin feels that being put on a line with Talbot and Ruslan Fedotenko during that run helped him break through and become the beast that he was for the remainder of that run. Malkin\u2019s performance against the Hurricanes that year is his signature playoff series.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my best game against Carolina,\u201d Malkin said. \u201cI was just more confident, I started scoring more. I think that was when Coach changed the line, I started playing with Fedotenko and Talbot. We started playing together this series and we started understanding each other a lot. We just score, believe, and we win.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Game 2,\u00a0Malkin completed his first career playoff hat trick with arguably the best goal of his career, The Geno. On the play, Malkin won an offensive faceoff forward. He retrieved the puck, carried around the net and scored on a spinning backhand shot into the top corner.<\/p>\n
All in all,\u00a0Malkin picked up six goals and nine points in just four games as the Penguins swept the Hurricanes to advance to the Stanley Cup Final for a rematch with the Red Wings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat Malkin was able to do in that series, that\u2019s one that stays in your memory bank. He couldn\u2019t be stopped,\u201d Penguins color analyst Phil Bourque said in that same 2009 film before repeating, \u201cHe couldn\u2019t be stopped. He had it in his head that he was going to dominate, and that\u2019s exactly what he did.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Malkin had worked to develop that sort of ownership with Michel Therrien, his first NHL head coach after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-732216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}