Rust's Unique Perspective on Malkin

The biggest topic around the Penguins locker room during cleanout day was Evgeni Malkin’s future. When asked for his opinion that afternoon, Bryan Rust laughed and replied, “All I'm going to say about that is, I love Geno. I love Geno as a friend and as a teammate. I don't know life in the NHL without him.”

Now that Malkin has officially signed for one more year, I got Rust’s thoughts as he prepared to take the ice for a summer skate in Cranberry.

“I mean, from my point of view, I don't think there was ever a doubt. But obviously, I don't sit at the table upstairs, I don't make those decisions, I'm not in on those conversations,” Rust said with a smile. “Obviously, Geno was incredible this past year, and you can see he just loves being in this room, he loves playing the game, he loves this city, he loves the fans.

“You can see how much it means to him, his disappointment when we lose or if he doesn't do well, and then his excitement and his joy when we are doing well. This year, we were pretty good again, we got back in the playoffs, and you can see how much joy that brought him, and I think it would have been a disservice to not have him back.”

Rust has a unique perspective on Malkin’s career. Before being part of it as his longtime teammate, Rust - a native Michigander - watched it as a fan of the Red Wings, the team Pittsburgh faced in back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals in 2008 and ’09.

“So, I was not a fan of Geno,” Rust said with a grin.

During that first matchup, Rust was 16 years old and playing for the Detroit Honeybaked AAA program. He watched the Red Wings win Game 6 and lift the Cup from the upstairs den of his parents’ old house in Novi, a suburb of the city.

The following year, now 17 years old and playing for the U.S. National Team Development Program, Rust sat in the exact same spot on the couch as the Penguins defeated the Red Wings in Game 7.

Despite the heartbreaking loss, Rust had built a begrudging respect for Malkin, who became the fourth-youngest player to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as Playoff MVP at 22 years, 10 months. Malkin had posted a league-best 36 points (14G-22A), with eight of those points coming in the Final.

“He was a beast,” Rust said. “He was obviously unbelievable, and he was kind of making everything happen.”

But fast forward to the next year, and Rust was donning a Penguins jersey on the floor of Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles after Pittsburgh selected him in the third round, 80^th overall, of the 2010 NHL Draft. Any negative feelings Rust had held about Malkin morphed into something completely different.

“It was just excitement of obviously a team that had won and had world-class players like Geno,” Rust said. “It's a locker room that you step into, and you almost just want to get autographs, because those guys are so awesome.”

It took a while for Rust to actually skate alongside Malkin, as he played four years of college hockey at Notre Dame before starting his professional career in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League.

Rust debuted with Pittsburgh during the 2014-15 season, and the next season, he got injured during his first call-up of the year. So, Rust was watching from the media level of PPG Paints Arena on November 28^th, 2015, when Malkin scored one of the best goals of his career in a shootout loss to Edmonton.

“He had that strip, go around, spin-o-rama backhand top shelf,” Rust said. “I remember I was fairly new here, and I'm like, holy smokes, what did I just watch? So, that was cool.”

He has been teammates with Malkin ever since. Rust went from a kid watching Malkin’s magic on a TV screen to playing alongside him on the ice, lifting two Stanley Cups together in 2015 and ’16.

“I think there were so many instances where he would take over games, and you would be like, all right, well, this is one of those nights where he's going to have the puck on his stick the entire night, and he's going to have a whole bunch of points, he's going to make so much happen,” Rust said.

“And I think he still does, but especially back then, it was always so much fun to just watch him completely take over a game, just completely control the pace, control the play. I think that's a rare breed, somebody who can almost kind of flip the switch, and then just control a game at the highest level in the best league in the world.”

During that same interview on locker cleanout day, Rust did a great job of outlining Malkin’s legacy. He called Malkin one of the best players ever, citing his numerous individual awards alongside his three Stanley Cups. And now that Malkin will be a Penguin forever, Rust said maintaining his elite level of play with one team for over two decades is what impresses him the most.

“I think that's such a difficult thing to do. And I think to be able to do it at the highest of levels in one city for this long is, I think, even harder to do,” Rust said. “Sometimes guys wear out their welcome, for whatever reason. But obviously Geno, like (Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang), that wouldn't happen to them here, because of the way that this organization and the city has treated them and continues to treat them. This place is home for G, and I think he really feels that.”