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Penguins Talk About Finally Standing up for Crosby
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- Penguins Talk About Finally Standing up for Crosby
IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Not on his watch. First-year Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Declan Carlile explained after Tuesday night's 7-4 preseason loss to the Detroit Red Wings why he incorporated an aspect of the game his new team might have been missing in recent seasons.
Carlile was one of a few Penguins defensemen who took offense – and did something about it – when the Red Wings began getting physical with their captain, Sidney Crosby .
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"I just think it's part of the game," Carlile said in a postgame interview with PHN. "If you're going to go after the best player in the world, I think it is what it is. I think it's kind of part of my game. It is what it is.
"Obviously, that's not something I want to do all the time, but, like I said, if you're going after the best player in the league, you're going to have to answer a little bit."
The first incident came in the first period. After a scoring chance, Crosby took some shoving near the net from Ben Chiarot , soon joined by a couple Red Wings teammates. Carlile and his defense partner, Ilya Solovyov , arrived and made it into more of a scrum. As players were skating away, Carlile was restrained as he continued to go after Chiarot.
Told after the game that there have been times when Crosby mostly had to stand up for himself, drawing some criticism directed at his teammates, Carlile made it clear he wouldn't let the Penguins down in that respect.
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"For him or for anybody – I think I'm in there to stick up for my teammates. I'm not afraid to shy away from that," Carlisle said.
Carlile, Solovyov and defenseman Kaedan Korczak each came to Crosby's aid more than once when the Red Wings got in an extra shove or the like.
"Of course, especially when the guys try to jump on the captain, on the legend of the hockey club. When they try to jump on the captain, on the legend of the hockey club, I just stand around and smoke darts? No. I have to defend him because he's the critical guy on the team who will make the results – him, ( Evgeni Malkin ), ( Erik Karlsson ), a lot of guys you have to defend because the teams, they know who the superstars and they will try to (get under his) skin," Solovyov said. "Part of my job is just to settle down these guys."
Finally, in the third period, Carlile more definitively took out his frustration on Detroit's Wilmer Skoog along the boards. He took a double roughing penalty and a 10-minute misconduct.
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"It just seemed like he got in a little shot after a whistle that I didn't really like. I thought there were a couple of times that something like that happened," Carlile said
"Obviously, in a regular-season game that's probably not happening. I'm not going to be taking that penalty at the end. But I think it was just kind of, I'd had enough of it throughout the game."
Penguins coach Dan Muse was generally supportive of Carlile, Solovyov and Korczak sticking up for Crosby.
"You want to be making sure that you're sticking up for your teammates, protecting your teammates – all teammates," Muse said. "You want to be hard to play against. There's different ways that that shows during the course of a game."
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