Anthony Angello offers Penguins some rare offense from the 4th line

The Buffalo Sabres of the mid-2000s were a perfect team for the “new” NHL.

Following the 2004-05 lockout that ushered in a salary cap as well as new rules designed to promote offense, the Sabres were one of the NHL’s top teams as they had several lines of quick, skilled forwards who could put up 20 goals and 50 points and were relatively cost-efficient.

They always fell short in the playoffs, but during the regular season, there was probably not a more entertaining team to watch during the first few seasons of the “new” NHL.

If nothing else, they captivated a 10-year-old from Manilus, N.Y. named Anthony Angello.

Now a 25-year-old power forward for the Pittsburgh Penguins, Angello had two Sabres players who were his favorites.

“One is (forward) Tim Connolly,” Angello said via video conference. “He grew up in Baldwinsville (N.Y.), and his parents actually live next door to my good buddy (Vegas Golden Knights forward) Alex Tuch and his family. So I watched him when he was the captain for a while. Then the other one that stands out was Maxim Afinogenov just because of how fast he was. He was always a fun player to watch.”

It’s safe to assume Angello’s family and friends from the suburbs of Syracuse, approximately three hours to the east of Buffalo, had some fun Thursday as they watched their son, cousin, kid from down the street, etc. score his second career goal during the Penguins’ 5-2 defeat of the Sabres at KeyBank Center.

Angello certainly enjoyed the moment playing his first career game in the venue he watched NHL contests as a kid.

“It was awesome,” Angello said. “Obviously, playing in Buffalo is a little bit surreal because this is close to home where I grew up and these were the NHL games that I came to. So finally playing in the building was awesome. Then scoring, honestly, was even more surreal if that’s even possible.

The goal was fairly impressive. It wasn’t some clunky rebound goal off a shin guard. It was a shot.

After settling a puck in the neutral zone, Angello gained the offensive blue line with speed and ripped a wrister past goaltender Jonas Johansson’s glove on the near side from the right circle at 2 minutes, 43 seconds of the third period.

“It was a great line shift,” Angello said. “I feel my line has been playing really well. We’re bonding, figuring out how each other are playing, playing to our strengths, playing simple in the right way. And good things are finally starting to happen.”

He got some pretty sound advice from an occasional linemate.

“Evan Rodrigues said any time I get it inside the top of the circles, make sure to let it rip,” Angello said. “So I didn’t think twice about shooting that one.”

It’s been a pretty lean season thus far for the Penguins’ fourth line. Angello’s score was the first from some version of a fourth line the team has deployed since Jan. 19.

“The fourth line had a real strong game (Thursday),” coach Mike Sullivan said. “They brought us a lot of energy. They had some offensive zone time. They possessed the puck down low. They forced Buffalo to have to expend energy defending them. That’s the type of contribution that those guys can provide for our team. They helped us with momentum.”

Angello probably won’t ever match the offensive exploits the likes of Connolly, Afinogenov and others offered in Buffalo a generation ago. But as one of the biggest players in the organization at 6-foot-5 and 210 pounds, he offers an obvious dimension that management values.

Through seven games, Angello, a fifth-round draft pick in 2014, has 28 hits. That translates to a hits per 60 minutes of ice time figure of 30.05, tops on the team.

“Anthony can bring a physical presence and brings some physicality to our team,” Sullivan said. “You can define physicality a number of different ways. Body checking is part of it and that’s one of the strengths of his game. That’s an aspect that we look to Anthony to help us. But he also needs to be strong on the wall, he needs to win puck battles, he needs to good at the net front and make it hard on our opponent’s goaltenders with their sight lines and their mobility in and around the crease. Those are other aspects of physicality I think that probably go unnoticed that are critically important.

“But those are all the areas I think of Anthony’s game that he brings to our team that he can help us. Him and I have had that discussion a number of times.”

Occasional goals, such as the one he scored Thursday, wouldn’t be bad either. Last season, he led Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in goals with 17 despite being limited to 48 games, due in part to repeated recalls to the NHL roster. So he has seen some success when it comes to scoring goals as a professional.

In fact, he saw himself scoring in Buffalo well before Thursday’s game.

“One of the things that I really focused on when I was watching games (as a fan), I always kind of envisioned myself out there, putting myself in different situations and trying to envision how I would handle different situations under pressure,” Angello said. “I envisioned scoring goals. I would say that was pretty spot-on to how I envisioned it.”

Note: Sullivan indicated defenseman John Marino remains day to day with an undisclosed injury. After missing Thursday’s game, he did not skate on Friday. … A day after being recalled to the taxi squad, forward Josh Currie was assigned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League.

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