The 24 NHL teams that will be involved when the season resumes Aug. 1 in Toronto and Edmonton opened training camps earlier this week, giving players a chance to restore their skating legs and sharpen their skills before the games begin.
What those guys can't do, no matter how hard they work, is to guarantee that they'll be able to elevate their confidence to the level needed to perform at the highest level possible.
That matters, because while it is an intangible, a belief in his abilities might be the greatest asset any player can have.
"It’s probably the most immeasurable statistic there is," Jason Zucker said. "When people are playing with confidence, you see it. You know it. You can never measure what somebody’s confidence is like at that time, and how much of a role it plays in a game, but typically, it’s a big role."
Zucker had plenty of that in his 15 games with the Penguins after being acquired from Minnesota. So did his fellow second-line winger, Bryan Rust, who had 27 goals in 55 games before the NHL suspended operations March 12 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
"Confidence can be key," Rust said. "That all starts with a mindset. You can get down on yourself easily when things aren’t going well, but you can be high on yourself when things are going well. ... Confidence can affect everything (offensively). Moving your feet, decision-making, just making reads."
Although it might be most obvious in the attacking zone, Zucker said that confidence affects a player's effectiveness all over the ice.
"It’s a complete game," he said. "It’s one of those things where, defensively, you’re jumping on pucks a little bit quicker because you’re more confident that you’re going to get a stick on it and make a play."
While there is no foolproof formula for maintaining confidence -- if there were, it wouldn't be so elusive -- players say that consistency, a mercurial quality itself, is a key component.
"Creating it mainly is doing the right thing over and over," Zucker said. "There are times when they go in and they don’t, but for me, my confidence builds from making the plays, whether it goes in or not. Obviously, it stinks if they don’t. The times I know when I’m not very confident is when I get it and I throw the puck, or I don’t hold onto it and try to make a play when the opportunity is there."
MORE PENGUINS
• The Penguins have quite a few players whose contracts will expire after the upcoming postseason, and there's no way the team will have the salary-cap space to re-sign them all, even if it were so inclined. And while very few, if any, personnel decisions have been finalized just yet, Jim Rutherford said the organization's decision-makers have a pretty good idea of what the guys who will be looking for new deals are able to contribute, even though playoff performances, strong or otherwise, could cause some evaluations to be adjusted. “In general, the 70-game picture is a pretty good picture of most players,” he said. “We feel we have reasons certain players played well at a certain time, or dropped off at a certain time, that we always factor in. We have the history of players over the years, what they’ve done during the course of a season. Players who start slow or players who start quick. But depending how long the playoffs go and depending how players play, that can certainly change (the opinions of) the people in the organization who contribute to that decision.” -- Molinari
• It's not the most important issue that will be addressed in the NHL in coming weeks, but it will be interesting to see if the pregame soccer sessions that have become part of the pregame routine for just about every team will be allowed during the pandemic. Players gather in a loose circle that may or may not meet social-distancing guidelines -- not that most people had even heard the term the last time an NHL game was played -- and kick the ball to one another, with the objective of keeping it off the floor for as long as possible. Whether league officials will be OK with a half-dozen or more players handling a soccer ball and exhaling vigorously in the direction of a teammate isn't clear. It would be quite a twist in the league's Return to Play story, though, if a team had its season sabotaged because some of its members were involved with an offshoot of another sport. -- Molinari
STEELERS
• Bud Dupree's grievance filed late last week got a lot of people fired up. But it really shouldn't have done so. Dupree had the franchise tag placed on him as a linebacker. But his grievance, along with those filed by the Ravens' Matthew Judon and Buccaneers' Shaq Barrett, claim that those three players are defensive ends, not linebackers. The difference is $2 million because the franchise tag value for defensive ends is higher. Judon and the Ravens already settled, with the two sides splitting the difference and Judon getting a $1 million raise. We'll see what happens with the other two. But the players have a point. For example, the Steelers played their nickel defense 51 percent of the time and their dime 17 percent in 2019. That's 68 percent of their defensive plays. In those alignments, Dupree and T.J. Watt are lined up as defensive ends in a four-man front. Also, over the past four seasons, Dupree has seen his time dropping into coverage fall considerably. The Steelers almost always rush Dupree and Watt when they're lined up as ends in the nickel and dime. Finally, the NFL and the Steelers are partly to blame for this, as well. Remember a couple of years ago, Khalil Mack made the All-Pro team as both a linebacker and defensive end. Last season, Barrett was named to the All-Pro team as a defensive end, as were Watt and Za'Darius Smith. The linebackers who made the team were all off-ball linebackers. And the Steelers a few years ago, changed Cameron Heyward's position designation from defensive end to defensive tackle because of that meshing of those two positions so that he would have a better chance of winning some of those postseason designations (It worked). Yet, Stephon Tuitt, who plays the same position as Heyward, is still listed as a defensive end. -- Dale Lolley on the North Shore
• The NFLPA responded last week to the NFL's proposal of putting 35 percent of this year's salaries into an escrow account by countering with an offer that would offer a flat salary cap in 2021. That means the 2021 cap would be the same as this season, $198.2 million. While that doesn't sound unreasonable, realize that, in reality, it's a decrease in cap space. Remember, as part of the new CBA signed earlier this year, rookies will see an increase in their base salaries of $50,000 in 2021, while other veteran players will see their base salaries rise around $100,000. So, essentially, by keeping the cap flat, teams would actually have at least $5 to $6 million less cap space with which to work. -- Lolley
PIRATES
• Piggyback starters has been a popular subject in summer camp, but it could be a challenge to pull off in games. Starting pitchers usually have free reign of the field and the bullpen as they warm up to start, and the process takes several hours. That obviously can't happen once the game starts and players are pitchers are confined to either the dugout or bullpen. Bullpen coach Justin Meccage has talked about having the second half of the piggyback start throwing around an hour before first pitch, giving them some time for a normal starter routine. From there, they can stay loose by riding the bike and throwing in the bullpen. "Some of the new training methods that we have, like the plyo balls and things like that that we use, allow them to use like a wall," Meccage said over a Zoom call this week. "Some of the other mobility type things that these guys do with the bands and things like that, those are some of the creative things that we're working through and identifying for each guy what that might look like." -- Alex Stumpf at PNC Park
• Even though he was added to the 60-man player pool this week, it is very unlikely that 2020 first-round pick Nick Gonzales will actually play in a major-league game. That would require him to be added to the 40-man roster, which would cost him option years, and the Pirates already have depth in the middle infield. However, if he was to make the leap and play, he would become the first position player in 20 years to appear in the major-league game before a minor-league contest. Xavier Nady was the last position player to accomplish this in 2000, and the last Pirates player to do so was Buddy Pritchard in 1957. -- Stumpf
• Gregory Polanco has been absent from workouts since Tuesday. Him not being ready for the start of the season would be a problem not just because the Pirates were counting on him being a big bat, but because the club doesn't have much outfield depth in their 60-man player pool. There are only four other outfielders in the PNC Park camp -- Bryan Reynolds, Jarrod Dyson, Guillermo Heredia and non-roster invitee Socrates Brito -- and Jason Martin is the only outfielder on the 40-man roster in the Altoona, Pa. alternate camp. As for players who could potentially fill-in in the outfield, Jose Osuna should bounce around all four corner sports, and utilityman JT Riddle has played all three outfield positions between last season, spring training and summer camp. The wild card could be Adam Frazier. While the Pirates weren't planning to use him in the outfield, Derek Shelton acknowledged last week that, "if we had to put him in the outfield, we could because he’s a good enough athlete." Frazier was nominated for a gold glove at second base last year, so moving him back to the outfield, where he graded as just an average fielder, would not be their first choice. -- Stumpf
PITT
• If there is a season, and that if gets bigger by the day, the ACC appears ready to make things as cost-friendly as possible. Cutting down on travel costs is a priority, and with a growing number of conferences going to league-only schedules, the ACC could take its 15 members schools and divide them into groups of five. That number includes Notre Dame, which plays football as an independent but competes in the ACC in all other sports. The Irish already have lost games against Wisconsin, USC and Stanford, but under the ACC pod system would be placed into a group of five. Assuming the pods are based on geography, there's a good chance Pitt and Notre Dame would play a home-and-home series. Most hypothetical models have Pitt, Notre Dame, Syracuse, Boston College and Louisville in a pod. Others have Virginia Tech in place of Louisville. There's no perfect system a this point, but hey, it's 2020. -- Mike Kovak on the North Shore
• The story of Jimmy Morrissey is a good one. Lightly recruited while at LaSalle College High School near Philadelphia, Morrissey ended up accepting a walk-on offer from Pitt at the urging of his father. Heading into his senior season, the 6-foot-3, 305-pound Morrissey now is considered one of college football's top centers and a likely NFL Draft pick. On the recruiting trail, coaches look for bigger prospects, the players who will line up at tackle or guard, such as Brandon Honorable (6-7, 280), an offensive lineman from Martin Luther King High School in Detroit and a member of Pitt's next recruiting class. But with Morrissey graduating and Pitt getting thin at center, the search is on to find potential walk-ons who could develop into a contributor, starter or something more. A name to remember is Matt Metrosky (6-2, 270), a senior at Greensburg Central Catholic who previously played at Greensburg Salem and is drawing interest from Pitt as a potential walk-on. Panthers offensive line coach Dave Borbely recently called Metrosky, and the two talked had an hourlong conversation before head coach Pat Narduzzi hopped to say hello and tell Metrosky that he liked his game tape. Borbely went a step farther, telling Metrosky his tape looked better than Morrissey's at the same age. - Kovak
