Apr 16, 2016 5 min read

Maybe Evgeni Malkin should have sat out another game or two.

The Penguins averaged four goals a game for 16 games without him and with him in Game 2 Saturday, the Penguins looked like a different team.

A bad team.

For the first 2 1/2 periods, Malkin skated as though he had a refrigerator dragging behind him and he added nothing to the Penguins’ offense. When a world-class player is ready to come back, you have to get him in the lineup, right?

Maybe not.

Prior to Game 2, and not counting the JV team’s 3-1 loss to the Flyers in the last game of the regular season, the Penguins scored 44 goals in 10 games.

Malkin is one of the best players in the world, but was it realistic to expect him to look like it after coming off a five-week layoff and jumping right in to the ramped-up pace of a playoff game?

Right now, the answer to that question is no.

By playing like his normal self, which he began to do in the third period Saturday, and having a big Game 3, Malkin can make it look like it was a nice, much needed tuneup and a much better idea.

• Let’s take time to thank the NBA for waiting until 2017 to allow corporate logos on team uniforms. It gives all of us in North America a chance to emotionally prepare ourselves.

Apparently, this is a big deal to a lot of fans and quite a few media guardians of all that is good in sports.

Is this really a big deal?

Has anyone noticed very few pro teams play in stadiums that are not one big commercial announcement?

Have citizens of Western Pennsylvania not held up well since Three Rivers Stadium turned into PNC Park and Heinz Field?

Have you noticed everything from faceoffs in the NHL to pitching changes in Major League Baseball are brought to you by somebody?

Have you ever watched a golf tournament on TV?

Do the logos pasted all over the players offend you or make you like them less? Do they interfere with your ability to enjoy the tournament?

I suggested in this column a long time ago that uniform advertising would be a good way for Major League Baseball to close the revenue gap between teams playing in mega TV markets and everybody else.

Allow only teams in the smaller markets to sell space on their uniforms. Advertisers would know their logos would be seen by millions of people over the course of the season, either when the teams with ads are playing on national TV or when they’re playing against teams in the mega markets.

That would make too much sense.

Meanwhile, put me down for not caring if the first and third base coaches are allowed to wear sandwich boards during the game.

The NBA estimates $100 million a year in revenue from uniform ads.

• The news the Steelers will play games on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day next season caused quite a stir this week. The NFL is a monopoly and can schedule games Wednesday at 3 a.m. if it wants. The tickets are sold before anybody knows the days and times of the games.

It’s been suggested the Steelers offered to host one of the Christmas Day games. If so, Dan and/or Art Rooney II did their players and coaching staff a favor.

Offering to play at home on Christmas eliminates the possibility of playing an away game on Christmas Eve, which is much worse. That could mean a charter flight sharing the skies with Santa and landing early Christmas morning.

Steelers coaches and players are guaranteed being able to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with their families. Of course, if you work game days at Heinz Field, it’s a lump of coal in your stocking.

• The Florida Panthers’ television ratings are up considerably this year because they won their division, but they had nowhere to go but up. In 2015, Panthers games on TV averaged fewer than 3,000 viewers per game. That means, when they played in Pittsburgh, the TV audience was 1/6th the size of the crowd watching the game in person at Consol Energy Center.

It’s not good for hockey when a team that hardly anyone cares about in Fort Lauderdale is in the playoffs and teams from places such as Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Buffalo and Boston are not.

• There is no better example of too much of a good thing than replays to determine the outcome of games. The NHL system is terrible and time consuming. The St. Louis Blues lost the second game of their series with the Chicago Blackhawks Friday night when a goal that would have made it 2-0 late in the third period was nullified after officials in Toronto and maybe the North Pole looked at a video for several minutes and determined one of the Blues’ skates was an eighth of an inch offside.

• Someone recently rented their $4.5 million house to Johnny Manziel. He apparently had a big party there and trashed the place. Here’s a tip for you: Don’t rent your house to Johnny Manziel. Here’s another tip: Don’t be the next NFL team to give him a job.

• Ken Burns’ two-part, four hour documentary on Jackie Robinson should be required viewing in every high school in America. How many people know Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were moved to become activists by the way Robinson handled breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier?

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter