It's been repeated ad nauseam that one of the Penguins' goals this season was to get faster.
"Faster," of course, doesn't just mean pure foot speed. It means playing with pace. Making quick decisions with the puck. Quick transitions. Quick passes.
"You have the speed, the speed of the guys, but you have the execution that's really important," Kris Letang explained. "Being on the same page, that all helps to play a fast game. ... If you play a collective game, five guys all the time and you have support everywhere, it's a lot easier to get up ice."
To play with pace requires chemistry and fine-tuning, things that would seem difficult to accomplish in such a short training camp with no preseason games to assist players in getting up to game speed.
How could this shortened training camp affect the Penguins' ability to play that fast game when the season opens just a week from Wednesday on Jan. 13 in Philadelphia?
When I asked Jason Zucker about it following Day 3 of the Penguins training camp at PPG Paints Arena, he thought that the shortened camp could actually help the Penguins play with more pace.
"I feel it's actually easier to gain that speed through a camp like this," Zucker told me. "The reason is we don't have a choice. We have to get after it. We have to push the pace. As you guys have kind of seen, these first few days have been pretty high-tempo. Drill after drill, just getting after it, a lot of speed. A lot of speed though the neutral zone. And when you're playing a team, Black versus Gold, that are both trying to play that same system with that same speed, you have to catch up. You have to make sure you're on top of your game and playing fast. It's actually, I feel, working to our advantage right now, and I feel like we're going to be able to come out of the gates hot here.
For some players, the biggest challenge will be just getting back up to the level of conditioning they're used to having for the start of a regular season. While some players have been in town for a few weeks or longer prior to the start of camp, some didn't arrive back in Pittsburgh until closer to the start date. That means that in the days before camp started, some players were away from the rink and the gym fulfilling their quarantine requirements. It's not easy to go right from quarantine back onto the ice for a full practice.
"The pace has been really good (in camp), I think, considering a lot of guys are coming off of their quarantines here in Pittsburgh," Cody Ceci said. "Not going to the rink for 10 days is quite a long time when you're used to skating every day in the offseason. I think the pace is pretty good, and we're just trying to get our conditioning up fro the start of the season."
"The biggest thing with a short camp is getting ready, getting into game shape as much as possible," Teddy Blueger said. "Just getting your conditioning levels up. I think we have the speed, it's just a matter of being able to get in good shape to be able to keep up for 60 minutes."
Mike Sullivan agreed that given the circumstances many players were dealing with before camp, conditioning has to be one of the focuses in getting players back up to game speed.
"(The pace) has been what we expected it to be," he said. "This is certainly a work of progress and the players haven't been involved in game action for quite some time now. There's a different type of conditioning involved with that. We're trying to give them as many reps as we can to allow for that process to take place. Hopefully over the course of the rest of this camp, we can sustain a higher pace for a longer period of time. But we don't want to overwhelm them, so we'll keep an eye on that."
When everyone is in game shape, though, it seems that the players are in agreement: This is a fast team.
"That's going to be one of the strengths of our team, speed and playing fast," said Mike Matheson, one of the players added in the offseason who definitely brings some added speed.
"I think we got a lot faster, to be honest," Letang said. "Every guy that is coming, they bring an element of speed."
"All of the guys on the team can skate really, really, well," Blueger said when I asked if this team is faster than last season's version. "We have a lot of fast guys, you can see that for sure."
MORE FROM DAY 3
• The lines and pairings were the same as Day 2:
Jake Guentzel-Sidney Crosby-Evan Rodrigues
Jason Zucker-Evgeni Malkin-Bryan Rust
Jared McCann-Mark Jankowski-Sam Lafferty
Colton Sceviour/Drew O'Connor-Teddy Blueger-Brandon Tanev
Brian Dumoulin-Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson-John Marino
Mike Matheson-Cody Ceci
Juuso Riikola-Chad Ruhwedel
• Most of the practice was devoted to special teams work. The Penguins' top power play saw Jake Guentzel working in the net-front role, Sidney Crosby in the slot, Letang quarterbacking the unit from the point, with Bryan Rust and Evgeni Malkin on the left and right sides respectively. The second unit was John Marino, Marcus Pettersson, Jared McCann, Evan Rodrigues, and Zucker, with Juuso Riikola taking some shifts at the point in Pettersson's place. The top penalty-killing unit was Colton Sceviour, Blueger, Mark Jankowski, and Brandon Tanev, while the second unit rotated.
• Tristan Jarry is riding a two-game shutout streak after Team Gold won today's scrimmage, 1-0. The Malkin line had a quick rush up ice in the second half, and Zucker finished with a top-shelf backhand shot for the game's only goal.