When the Pittsburgh Penguins won their second championship in as many years in June, the first person Sidney Crosby passed the Stanley Cup to was stay-at-home defenceman Ron Hainsey, who handed it off to veteran winger Chris Kunitz, who then gave it to Evgeni Malkin, and so on and so forth. In total, more than 25 players got a chance to grab the trophy, hoist it into the air and parade it around the ice at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.

Tom Sestito once again wasn’t one of them.

The Penguins’ part-time enforcer, who led the team with three fights last season, had been a healthy scratch for the Penguins’ 2017 playoff run, just as he had been the year before. It was proof a team didn’t need toughness to win back-to-back championships.

And yet, 11 days after relying on skill and speed to win back-to-back Cups, the Penguins traded a first-round pick to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for their biggest bodyguard.

“After winning a championship two years ago, we saw how much harder teams played us,” Penguins GM Jim Rutherford told Postmedia after acquiring fourth-line winger Ryan Reaves, who fought six times last season. “We ran into teams that wanted to get physical against us. We think it’s only going to become even tougher.”

That the Penguins believe they will have to punch their way to a third consecutive championship is not a new idea.

Staged fights and heavyweight goons might be occupying the same wing in the museum of hockey artefacts as wooden sticks and visor-less helmets, but fighting has not quite gone away completely. If anything, with more and more teams giving jobs to energy players who are also willing to drop their gloves, it appears to be making a late-round comeback — in part because the players want it.

To emphasize this point, the first text Reaves received after getting traded to Pittsburgh was from Crosby, welcoming him to the team. A couple days later, the Penguins captain called to personally let Reaves know how relieved he was to have the no-nonsense winger on his side.

“We only played him a couple of times a year, but I’m sure he’s happy that those are two games where he doesn’t have to deal with me chasing him around anymore,” said Reaves, whose No. 1 priority is to keep people like him away from Crosby. “It’s definitely a big focus for me to make sure he’s a lot more comfortable on the ice. And when he isn’t comfortable, then I change that.”

Reaves’ comments on self-policing come at a time when the NHL is cracking down even more on slashing. But they also come at a time when the number of fights actually rose from 344 in 2015-16 to 372 last season.

Though the number of fights hasn’t come close to where it was 10 years ago — there were 734 fights in 2008-09 — there’s still a place in the NHL for the occasional scrap. While Jaromir Jagr, Jarome Iginla and other past-their-prime scorers are still looking for jobs in a market that no longer values their diminishing skillset, a willingness to fight is a highly employable trait — as long as you can kill penalties or score the odd goal.

It is why Nashville acquired Cody McLeod (NHL-leading 19 fights) at last year’s trade deadline, why Edmonton put Patrick Maroon (nine fights) on a line with Hart Trophy winner Connor McDavid, and why Matt Martin (five goals and nine points in 82 games) appears to be beating out Josh Leivo (10 points in 13 games) for a spot with the Maple Leafs this season.

As a one-time 28-goal scorer who is now playing on the fourth line, Minnesota’s Chris Stewart said fighting has kept him in the game — not out of it.

“You see the guys now that are struggling to get deals, they’re on PTOs and things like that,” said Stewart, who had 13 goals and 10 fights for the Wild last season. “There have been times in my career where I could have been bitching and complaining about not getting ice time and knowing that I could be scoring goals. Instead, I’ve made myself useful and effective in other departments, too, and rounded out my game. That’s something I’ve done over the last couple of years to make sure I have a job every year.”

Most teams still have a player who can keep the peace. Some, like the Wild (Stewart and Marcus Foligno) and the Oilers (Maroon, Milan Lucic and Zack Kassian), have two or even three who can do it. Even the Vegas Golden Knights decided they needed a fighter, choosing depth defenceman Deryk Engelland (nine fights) over Calgary’s Kris Versteeg, Troy Brouwer and Matt Stajan in the expansion draft.

“Maybe it’s being old-school, but I’ve always believed that you have to have guys who can protect your better players,” said Wild head coach Bruce Boudreau. “Smaller players want to feel bigger, and they know if they’ve got big brother around, they know they can play a little freer. When you don’t have that, you seem to get pushed around.”

In other words, teams still believe players do a better job of policing the game than officials. It’s not a new concept, even though the job description has changed slightly.

Today’s fighters do not look like Colton Orr or George Parros or John Scott, who combined for 35 goals in 1,237 career games. For one, they are a lot smaller. But more importantly, they can also play. Maroon scored as many goals as Calgary’s Sean Monahan (27) last season, while Nashville’s Austin Watson tied for 25th in playoff scoring with four goals and nine points in 22 games.

“The game has completely changed since I came into the league in the last seven years,” said Reaves, who scored a career-best seven goals and 13 games with the Blues last season. “You don’t see the guys who play four minutes, get into a fight and are done. You don’t see staged fights. I’m definitely coming into a team with a lot of skill. I don’t think me coming here and playing a protective role and just running guys and doing nothing else is going to help. I definitely have to do that, but I also have to play in the offensive zone and chip in wherever I can.”

The fights also look different. They are more spur-of-the-moment and less staged. The last time Stewart dropped his gloves was in retaliation to teammate Zach Parise getting slashed in the face by Washington’s Tom Wilson. When asked why he felt the need to fight, Stewart said it was to prevent Wilson from doing something similar again. Of course, you’d have to think that the four-minute penalty Wilson received might have been an even stronger deterrent.

But according to Stewart, fighting is only part of it.

“I would just say if you don’t have a guy like that in the lineup, guys on your team are going to play a little smaller knowing there’s someone else like me on the other team in their lineup,” he said. “I think the more of that you have in the lineup, the more it gives you as an identity.”

While Toronto’s Mike Babcock said the reason the Leafs have Martin in the lineup is “to keep the flies off” other skilled players, no amount of waving your hands will actually make the flies go away for good. All it means is a skilled player doesn’t have to swat at them, too. It creates peace of mind more than actual peace.

“You want your players to play. You don’t want your players to be thinking,” said Babcock. “And so those guys are here to do a job, and their job’s important.”

Said Leafs star Auston Matthews: “I think you saw last year, we had a young team, and we still have a young team. It’s still a physical game, so guys are going to get hit and guys are going to get ran. (Martin) stuck up for me a couple of times last year and it’s kind of what he does.”

And yet, how effective are enforcers if the Penguins won back-to-back championships without one?

It obviously wasn’t easy. Crosby missed a game in the second round after getting cross-checked in the face by Washington’s Matt Niskanen, while Malkin was forced into fighting P.K. Subban at one point during the Cup final. Next year, with Reaves in the line-up, maybe the road to another championship results in fewer bumps and bruises.

Or maybe, like Sestito before him, Reaves ends up watching the Cup being hoisted from the press box.

“People always say, ‘Pittsburgh doesn’t have an enforcer and they’re winning with a smaller team,’" Martin said. "I know from experience in playing a team that has nobody, you’re going to go out there and — I’m not saying you take shots at guys illegally — but you definitely want to push around the other team and make them feel like it’s not going to be an easy night out there for them.

“I think that’s why Pittsburgh did what they did.”

mtraikos@postmedia.com