Jake Guentzel did something Thursday that, by his own admission, is rare.

He scored a goal.

To be clear, the All-Star Pittsburgh Penguins forward scores plenty of goals. The two 40-goal seasons he has on his resume are evidence of that.

But the way he scored his first goal in Thursday’s 4-2 road win against the Florida Panthers was unique.

For him.

Positioned to the right of the crease, he angled his right skate to deflect a puck shot by Penguins forward Evgeni Malkin into the Panthers’ cage for a go-ahead goal.

When asked Wednesday in Cranberry how often he uses his skates for any plays with a puck, Guentzel offered a slim audit.

“Not much,” Guentzel said. “I don’t use it very much. Catch passes, maybe. But that’s about it.”

There really aren’t any stats for how often players use their skates to play pucks. So it’s difficult to accurately gauge how often the Penguins do compared to the NHL’s 31 other franchises.

But it’s clearly something the Penguins have deployed to some considerable success as of late.

During a 4-3 overtime road win against the Buffalo Sabres on Dec. 9, forward Jeff Carter scored the winning goal by offering some footwork that might have dazzled Luka Modric.

Working on a power-play opportunity, Penguins forward Rickard Rakell played a puck to the front of the crease where Carter was positioned.

Carter stopped the puck with his right skate then kicked it forward with his left skate before shoveling in a forehand shot to win the contest.

How often do players use their skates to play pucks? It depends on who you ask.

While Guentzel suggests it’s an infrequent occurrence for him, one of his linemates offers a different estimate.

“I feel like every shift,” Rakell said. “You have to use your skates because guys are so good at tying sticks up. Being around the wall, sometimes you have to use your stick to shield the puck (so) you have to use your feet instead. Almost every shift. … Pucks coming off the wall aren’t always on your stick so you have to catch it with your skate first then get it to your stick as soon as possible.”

And it’s not just a tactic for those trying to drive offense.

“If you consider like the wall plays and the puck battles on the wall,” said forward Teddy Blueger, typically the fourth-line center and one of the Penguins’ top penalty killers, “and just kicking the puck out. … On wall plays when (defensemen) are pinching down on walls or whatever, you use it to take away the wall and block that avenue.”

Playing pucks with skates isn’t something teams devote a considerable amount of time to in practice. Or any, to be frank. It’s probably more of an instinctual action that gets refined during the course of practice and acted upon within the realm of a game.

“A little bit of both,” Blueger said. “Like anything else, the more repetitions you have at it, the better you get. But sometimes, some of those are so goofy or such a one-off play, it’s hard to practice that scenario.”

Again, without any hard data, it’s difficult to say if NHLers use their skates to play pucks more than in any previous era. Anecdotally, it appears to be a bit more common in today’s NHL.

“Without a doubt, it’s a skill,” said Penguins coach Mike Sullivan, himself a defensive forward in the 1990s and 2000s. “The game happens so fast out there, sometimes you don’t get perfect passes. It’s not always on your tape. To have the ability to retrieve pucks, regardless of where they’re at, I think is, without a doubt, an important skill. We talk a lot about passing and receiving, but receiving skills are every bit as important as passing skills. Your skates are a big part of that.

“No one’s better at it than (forward Sidney Crosby). The way he’s able to receive pucks that are in his skates and be able to kick them up to his stick blade to make a next play is a remarkable skill he’s mastered. But he’s not the only one. There’s a lot of guys that work on that a lot of time. Maybe because the speed of the game maybe forces errant passes. There’s a little bit more controlled chaos out there I think than in yesteryears, where it might have been a little bit more of a controlled game. That might have something to do with it.”

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