CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Off the ice, Patric Hornqvist is much like he is on it. The burly forward is usually gregarious with a devilish smile.
Not Wednesday. The smile was gone and the Swede was as somber as the Penguins' dressing room.
Like many of his teammates, Hornqvist was still processing the deal that sent Carl Hagelin to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for Tanner Pearson.
Obviously, Hornqvist has been part of trades during his career and seen teammates come and go, even teammates he's won a pair of championships with in Pittsburgh. But this one was a bit different.
Hagelin and Hornqvist, Haggy and Horny, the only two Swedes on the roster, had been inseparable on and off the ice.
"Obviously, it's a tough day for me and my family," Hornqvist told me. "This is the worst part of the business. You see your best friend getting traded ... so used to seeing him every single day, driving to the rink together and to the games together and to the flights ... and now he's gone in one breath."
Before Hagelin was seen leaving the Lemieux Sports Complex accompanied by Matt Cullen, Hornqvist said he spoke with his now former teammate.
"It was a tough conversation," he was telling me. "Just wished him luck and whatever I can do for him and his family, I'll be there for them. I know, it's not an easy time.
"That's the hard part of this game. But we all signed up for it when we came here."
In trading Hagelin, the Penguins are parting ways with not only their fastest skater but also one who was quite popular with teammates. Hagelin joins Conor Sheary, Ian Cole and Tom Kuhnhackl as the latest two-time Cup champion to be jettisoned by the team within the last calendar year.
With the Penguins mired in a stretch where they've lost six of seven, have scored just 13 goals over that span and sit just two points out of last place in the Eastern Conference, change was inevitable.
"It's brutal," was how Matt Murray put it to me. "It's tough to lose a good player and an even better person like Haggy. It's not a good feeling. But it's part of the business, I guess."
As Wednesday's 35-minute practice concluded, Mike Sullivan gathered his team around center ice and spoke to them for about two minutes. Even in an empty building, the coach could not be heard. But the message, he says, was pretty simple: Consistency.
"I think it should be a wake-up call to all of us that we've got to find some consistency in our game and if you don't, then change is inevitable," the coach said. "That's just the reality of our business. We're trying to push this team in the right direction, to play the right way and to play a certain way that gives us the best chance to win. We've done it at times through the early part of the season, but not nearly consistently enough to get the results.
"We have high expectations of this group. Part of the burden or responsibility when you have success is that the expectations are extremely high and no one has higher expectation than the people in this dressing room. But certainly, I think we all have to take ownership of where we're at and we have to take ownership from where we go from here. We have a lot of hockey left. We have an opportunity to come together as a group and become the team that we all expect this group can become."
That it would be Hagelin that was dealt hardly came as a surprise, though. He is an unrestricted free agent at season's end and was likely in his last season in Pittsburgh anyway, after coming over from the Ducks in January 2016 in exchange for David Perron and Adam Clendening. Hagelin had just a goal and two assists in 16 games this season, though he provided the Penguins with speed on the forecheck and penalty kill.
All of the above came into play when making the trade, according to Rutherford. The GM said he'd simply run out of patience with this team and his intent was to shake things up.
"I'm sure it'll affect the chemistry," Rutherford said. "(Hagelin's) a very popular guy in the room. But I'm not sure how the chemistry is right now, based on what I'm seeing."
Rutherford did not rule out making more moves in the immediate future. Hagelin was just one name that had surfaced in the 10 days since the general manager put his team on blast. Bryan Rust, Jake Guentzel, Riley Sheahan and Daniel Sprong were some of the other names most mentioned.
It was almost assumed that Sprong would be dealt during Tuesday's GM meetings in Toronto. The 21-year-old said he wasn't relieved but wasn't quite sure what to make of Wednesday's trade either.
"I don't know, there could still be more trades made today or coming in the future," he told me. "Guess if it happens, it happens. But I guess I'm not in this one."