BLUEBERRY, Pa. – It’s a great hockey team.
But man, it took half an hour on this Monday morning, not to mention the hellish four months that followed, to rediscover that understanding.
At 10:32 am, a couple of minutes after my fever was checked and I was asked a questionnaire when entering the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex for the first time in an eternity, I went up the steps to the press hanger on the main track , I opened the Purell, I cleaned my assigned job, socially distanced and observed Matt Murray and Tristan Jarry carry the pristine ice cap.
Everything was so quiet and it seemed so … clean:
See what I mean? Hear it?
Then at 10:46 am, just as I had plugged in all the gadgets and expected Bryan Rust inevitably bursting out the bank door in front of the other skaters, the team sent a statement by email advising that nine players out of the expected 32 not participate due to coronavirus concerns.
As in nine. From 32.
As in, more than a quarter of the list.
As in uh-oh.
And while the statement, upon closer inspection, was not as ominous as what it had initially absorbed, applying harmless terms like ‘potential secondary exposure’ and ‘abundance of caution’, it certainly caused a chill. Not just for the people involved, especially Patric Hornqvist, but also for the perspective of everything that was about to happen here. Because if something like this could happen, serious though it is, at this prenatal stage of the process, try to imagine what might happen in the future.
I went there. I went hard there.
Which is when Rust came up …
… alone as always.
Which is when more of them entered.
And in a short time Evgeni Malkin Jarry waved a wrister before playfully skating back to the red center to pump a lone left fist, then called Sidney Crosby feed it for another rush.
AND Kris Letang he moved the antennas from his knees to the defending blue line to practice clearance.
AND Zach Aston-Reese planted Jake Guentzel with the first solid contact he had probably felt since his shoulder was ripped apart at Christmas, eliciting the loudest roar of the session from teammates who loved Guentzel’s handling.
AND Conor Sheary, no doubt already feeling the burden of being on the top line with Crosby and Guentzel, he practiced target shooting at the cardboard goalkeeper, aiming for each hole less than five.
And Sid, at the other extreme, was throwing water bottles like they were a dollar each at Kennywood:
That was just before 11 in the morning, when Mike Sullivan, Joining his players on the ice for the first time since a March 11 practice in Columbus blew his first whistle. But he had already begun to feel very different.
Not quiet Not clean.
____________________
They are a great hockey team.
That crystallized no more than a few minutes, when Sullivan displayed the following lines and combinations:
Guentzel-Crosby-Sheary
Zucker-Malkin-Rust
Marleau-McCann-Lafferty / Rodrigues
Aston-Reese-Blueger-Tanev
Dumoulin-Letang
Pettersson-Marino
Johnson-Schultz
I mean my gosh. Plug Hornqvist into the right wing of the third line and release the punch.
It’s hard to predict how it compares to the 2016 and 2017 depth chart, but it feels safe to say that the defense is deeper than either of those teams, considering Justin Schultz was number 1 in the last race and that John Marino’s Unlike any young man, the franchise has been in the job for quite some time. If you feel equally safe to say that there won’t be many teams in the 24 field that have a starting goalkeeper with two rings and a backup that have outperformed him in the regular season.
On the front is where it is difficult.
Crosby gets Guentzel and Sheary, as he had during pre-camp training, and they could recreate their possession magic starting in 2017. But they also might not. At some point, Sheary will have to score a goal or three to win the stay.
As for Guentzel, the biggest compliment anyone can offer is that he looked like him. Aside from an unusually longer mane, like most of us these days.
“I thought Jake looked fantastic today,” said Sullivan. “He has been on the ice for quite some time. He has worked very hard to get to this point. He looks strong.”
“It looked really good, for someone who had as much layoff as he did,” Crosby said. “He has done a great job getting ready.”
About Sid and the Kids II, he added, “We are quite familiar with each other. We have fun together. We have a short period of time here to prepare, so that should help move forward.”
The other significant development on ice on the day, although this was also not surprising, had Jason Zucker appearing on Malkin’s left wing, with Rust on the right. He had done too well alongside Crosby after coming from the Wild (six goals, six assists in 12 games, plus a responsible two-way game) to discard the top six. And while Zucker never lined up with Malkin until this morning, he has demonstrated the ability of a chameleon in any setting.
“It’s a work in progress, for sure,” said Zucker. “He’s an amazing player, as everyone knows. He’s a little bit different in style than Sid. He’s definitely positive. He’s exciting.”
I also asked about their adaptation of the system:
Zucker: “I felt like I was getting more comfortable in the system and then you have all these months … It’s nice to be able to study the system a little while we were away. I’m excited to play in it and learn a little better.” pic.twitter.com/YfpWn57iHa
– Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) July 13, 2020
Remember, this guy has found gold. It shouldn’t be here. Or Guentzel shouldn’t. But they definitely shouldn’t both of them to be here.
Heck, one could say the same for a future Hall of Famer, Patrick Marleau, who received the unimaginable break of having four months to heal his 40-year-old body before the toughest hockey.
Believe it or not, I found a respectful way to ask about it.
“Yes, sure,” he replied. “There are guys who have bumps and bruises. I was able to exercise a lot during my free time, I was lucky to have a gym for myself. It was almost like a summer workout for me. I hope it bodes well.”
While on this track, it’s worth noting that Schultz won’t be here this winter, now working on an expiring contract. And every season Marleau plays could be the last. And as far as we know, Murray could also be gone, either because of the restricted pressure of the free agency contract or because Jim Rutherford wouldn’t want to lose it to Seattle in 2021 like he lost Marc-Andre Fleury to Las Vegas
I don’t know if these penguins are the Eastern class. There’s a lot to like about the Bruins and Lightning, and it wouldn’t be wise to fire Capitals and even Upstart Flyers. But I do know that there is plenty of talent here, just as I know that much of it will not be here once this extraordinary event is over.
That is why I asked Sullivan about the opportunity in question. As expected, he returned top notch.
“I think this team has as much chance as any of winning the Stanley Cup,” he replied. “I mentioned it to the team today. We’ve had that discussion at our WebEx meetings during this pandemic. And I think our players recognize the opportunity. The other aspect is that we also recognize how difficult it is to win it. There are many good teams out there. We feel that were A good team. We are excited about the opportunity before us. Now, it’s about taking advantage of that opportunity. “
____________________
They are a great hockey team.
Things can go wrong. As Sullivan emphasized, the playoffs are not a picnic, and even less so for a No. 5 seed in an impromptu tournament, which he constantly reinvents and greatly favors the top four. The legs may take too long to start. The disc may bounce the wrong way. And, as the day recalled, health remains paramount at all times.
But there is much to love to ignore.
It is a strongly motivated group, beginning with a captain addicted to winning.
I asked him how much this would mean to him, to Malkin, to Letang, especially since it seems like for much of 2020 it could never happen.
“You have a short window in your career to be able to do that,” he replied. “Every time you have the opportunity to play for the Stanley Cup, you want to take advantage of it. It is not easy, but it is a great feeling, we have felt it before, and we know what it takes. That is your goal every year, we are in a position to compete for him and we have to find a way to do it. “
Imagine those three with … one, two, three, four rings. Then imagine how you would enjoy the room as much as the first.
“That’s why those guys have those championships, because that momentum is always there,” said Marleau, and his next one will be the first in two decades in the NHL. “That is why I am happy to be here.”
Sullivan spoke of penguins who want “very bad” to win one for Marleau, similar to the choruses once heard by Ron Hainsey, Trevor Daley and others. That narration is already firm, but with a lot of accompaniment.
From my point of view this will boil down to the conditioning, chemistry, and absolute luck that even the best champions need, so we don’t forget Chris Kunitz’s turn the knuckle past Craig Anderson.
Conditioning was a difficult read on this day. The practice consisted of skating hard in the middle of a fast pace, but there were no wind sprints, Sullivan hates them, or something like that that would have exposed the players. From this perspective, there were some huffs and bows, but only when justified.
“I think our boys did an excellent job preparing for this camp,” Sullivan returned to my question about the team’s overall fitness. “My first impression is that we have a fairly fit group. I think there are aspects of our fitness so that our boys are ready for the game. Mainly, it is belligerence, combat drills, tight spaces, pushing and shoving. That is a different type of conditioning, and it has been the only type that they have not been able to address until today. “
Still, he expressed even more appreciation for the chemistry, for the spirit he saw.
Which one all the world actually saw. And listened. And it felt.
Witness this reaction to Marino’s barbell-down beauty who won a semi-dumb half-court tournament based on an old United States hockey exercise that’s a Sullivan favorite:
“Great energy. Great enthusiasm,” said Sullivan. “There were parts of practice where I felt we had to overcome fatigue, and we did. We have worked very hard to get to this point, and I think our players and our leadership deserve a lot of credit for that.” This is how you have the kind of day we had today. “
Ideally, with a few more starting August 1.
Now where did I put that Purell?
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