Penguins forward Bryan Rust: 'I wasn’t as good as I could have been'

Bryan Rust got to his offseason a bit earlier than his teammates.

By 22 minutes on the dot.

In his team’s regular season finale April 13, Rust suffered a right hand injury and left the contest at 19:00 of the second period.

And exactly one minute into the overtime period, Columbus Blue Jackets forward Johnny Gaudreau scored on a breakaway to claim a 3-2 home win that brought the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 2022-23 season to an amaroidal conclusion.

On Saturday, during the Penguins’ exit interviews, Rust didn’t elaborate as to the specific nature or severity of his injury but indicated a month of rehabilitation would get him back to 100%.

“Luckily, it’s not as bad as it could be,” Rust said. “Could have been worse. Dodged a bullet.”

Getting Rust’s level of play back to a high level might require a bit more.

On the surface, Rust’s base figures were adequate.

He appeared in a career-best 81 games. And he might have had a complete set of 82 had he not been scratched March 9 to attend to the birth of his second child.

With 20 goals, he reached that mark for the fourth consecutive season while posting 46 points, the third-best figure of his career.

But those tabulations don’t represent the far-too-lengthy stretches without sufficient production.

Between Nov. 2 and Dec. 1, Rust produced one goal in 14 games, all while playing on a line with either Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin as his center.

That was followed by a nine-game goalless skid between Dec. 27 and Jan. 14.

Perhaps his most unappetizing sequence involved 18 games in which he generated only five points (two goals, three assists) between Feb. 11 and March 20.

Rust, in the first year of a six-year contract that carries a salary cap hit of $5.125 million, doesn’t shirk in acknowledging those stretches of limited output during his 2022-23 campaign.

“I don’t know what it was,” Rust said. “I definitely think I could have been better. Times where I was good, times where I was playing well. Times where I don’t know what it was. Haven’t been able to put it on my finger yet. But I wasn’t as good as I could have been. Could have scored a few more goals, put a few more pucks in the net this year. Had quite a few chances.

“Quite a few times, there were games that were close that ended up not going our way. If I’m able to score maybe a few of those goals, maybe we’re not talking right now (about the season being over). Maybe we’re talking a couple of months from now. It’s something that I’ve got to learn from, I’ve got to live with. Definitely got to take that into this offseason and definitely going to work a little bit harder knowing there’s more.”

For the first time since he became an NHL regular in 2015, Rust, 30, is not in the postseason. And the Penguins are not playing playoff games for the first time since 2006.

There is a feeling of emptiness for Rust and company.

“We know there’s more to give in this room,” Rust said. “There’s guys who probably say, ‘Hey, there’s probably things I could have done better to help this team get into the playoffs and do something.’ Me included.

“We know that there was more, and it was extremely unfortunate that we weren’t able to capitalize on how good of a team we had in here and the potential that we had to do something great.”

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