There aren’t many individual trophies Evgeni Malkin has yet to earn. He is one of few players who has a Conn Smythe, Calder, Art Ross, Ted Lindsay, and Hart Trophy. The 2011-12 season was the one season where Sidney Crosby nearly missed the entire season. It provided an opening for Evgeni Malkin to show he was just as capable of being the 1C on the Penguins. For the first time Evgeni Malkin was afforded the best quality of teammate the team had to offer. In normal years Sidney Crosby will usually get who he wants and that usually includes the best winger on the team. Malkin also received a heavy dose of both Paul Martin and Kris Letang. When you combine the quality of teammate with Malkin being 25 and in the prime of his career you get his career best year. Malkin finished with a career high 50 goals and won the Art Ross Trophy with 109 points. He also earned both the Hart Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award for the only time in his illustrious career.
Another thing worth mentioning is that Malkin did all of this while coming off of a major knee injury sustained the year before. It was a remarkable return.
If you’ve got a lot of time today here’s all 50 goals he scored.
Malkin didn’t do it alone. The staple of many great Penguins lines was by his side in Chris Kunitz. Over his career Kunitz was fortunate to play with many great players, but those players were also fortunate to have Chris Kunitz. He famously rode shotgun with Crosby for many years, but he was also a top six winger on Anaheim’s 2007 Stanley Cup winning team. He played with both Teemu Selanne and Andy MacDonald. The 2011-12 season he was with Evgeni Malkin. The results were great.
Rounding out the trio was James Neal. His career best season was also in 2011-12 and his shooting ability was at the top of the reasons for his great season. He finished with 40 goals and 81 points which are both career highs.
While the eventual trade of James Neal to Nashville was highly beneficial to the Penguins it doesn’t mean his time with Pittsburgh was void of success. Neal was the perfect match for Malkin and Kunitz who both played like bulldogs and created shooting space for Neal’s electric wrist shot. His bumper role on the power play led to a league leading 18 power play goals. His release was as good as anybody in the game at the time. You felt like any shot Neal took had the potential to go in.
Here are all 40 of his goals.
The Kunitz-Malkin-Neal trio will go down as one of the best lines of the era and was huge reason the team was able to navigate the absence of Sidney Crosby. It also gave Malkin his opportunity to earn individual awards he most definitely deserved.
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