Madden Monday: Hidden value, positive fallout from decision to put Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin on same line

Necessity may have been the mother of invention when it comes to Mike Sullivan’s recent decision to pair Sidney Crosby on the same line with Evgeni Malkin.

For the immediate future, though, it appears that mother knows best.

In the three games since the Penguins (5-7-1) moved Malkin from center of his own line to Crosby’s left wing, the team has won twice against Anaheim and Montreal, and Crosby has totaled seven points.

As a result, during this week’s “Madden Monday” podcast, Mark Madden of TribLive and 105.9 The X applauded the coaching move.

“I think putting Sid with Geno is a genius move for the team and for both of them, even though it totally undoes whatever semblance of balance they might have felt they have — which they don’t,” Madden said. “No matter how you put the lines together, they don’t have enough good players to achieve balance. At least this way, those two can make plays with each other, and even though they don’t really have a second line behind them. At least they got enough production in these last two games against lesser teams to win a couple and get Sid going which is really important.”

Madden says the Penguins should keep that line together for the foreseeable future, even when forward Bryan Rust comes back from injury.

“I’m leaving those two together until they stop scoring — until Sid stops scoring. I see no reason to rip it asunder while it’s working,” Madden said.

“My fear is that if they separate those two on different lines, it won’t be any good for either of them or for the team. Putting them on the same line is not something I thought would help, but I think this team is at the point where they have little choice.”

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Madden says there is one specific element of Crosby and Malkin playing together that has been better than he expected.

“I actually am impressed that the forechecking has not gone lacking on that line, even though Geno is a center,” Madden said. “He’s not much of a forechecker, even as a center. He (hasn’t) done great at that playing wing, but Sid has basically been forechecking the wing and backchecking the slot. So he’s picking up a burden there.”

Some positive residue from this tactical move is that the Penguins are getting contributions from Rickard Rakell, who is the third member of the line. As the right wing on the unit, Rakell scored twice against the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday and assisted on Crosby’s first goal Saturday over Montreal during a 3-1 win.

“He’s the secret beneficiary, because (opponents) aren’t going to pay a lot of attention to him. He’s just going to show up, and the puck is going to find him once in a while because the other team’s going to pay more attention to 87 and 71,” Madden said.

Also, during the podcast, we talk about some other improvements to the Penguins lately. We project the Steelers’ record during the second half of the season, and we try to figure out what went wrong for both Pitt and Penn State.

Listen: Tim Benz and Mark Madden discuss some Penguins’ improvements, Steelers projections, and failures from Pitt and Penn State.