Man, it just hits differently when the players making the plays are younger, doesn't it?

Good morning to you. Good Friday morning from Buffalo, New York. I'm Dan Kovachovich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports, and this is Daily Shot of Penguins.

It comes your way bright and early every weekday.

If you're into football and or baseball, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Pirates in the same place that you found this.

Penguins 5, Sabers 2, a really welcome W, as Tommy Novak was telling

me afterward. I know you guys have been down playing the whole, you know, these games before

the Olympic break, you know, no pressure, whatever, but seriously, this has to feel good.

I mean, you can go into a break on this note. Yeah, for sure. I mean,

obviously losing the last couple, I think. Getting this one's huge. It's a longer break, I think,

than usual. So it's just nice to go out on the win for sure. Yeah, last game before the

Olympic break. Eastern Conference opponent that's on the rise. You're in their building.

You haven't played well as you just heard Novak reference in your previous couple of games.

You're missing not one, not two, but three forwards from your regular lineup.

And you learned about all three of them on the same

day as this game. Ricard Raquel, lower body injury, Blake Lazotte, his wife having the

couple's first child, Nola Chari was sick, and things got so dire that an emergency call had to be placed to Wilkesbury.

So young Avery Hayes, who'd never been in the NHL, who had to basically jump out of bed, get in the car,

drive across a couple of states, Pennsylvania and New York, to get here, spend at least some of that time, putting himself into a suit in the parking lot outside Key Bank Center so that he could enter the building looking all snazy and everything the way you're supposed supposed to as if anybody associated with the penguins

would have cared in this setting.

And then he pops a gorgeous first NHL goal.

Just flying through center ice, picking up a bouncing puck, blowing past Jacob Bryson, Buffalo's

defenseman, and then really blowing a shot

...