There was just one major surprise when the Penguins went public with their season-opening roster Monday.
It was that they deemed it necessary to wait until the preseason nearly was over rather than announcing the list before the first drill of training camp, because none of the 23 players who made the cut had been expected to be anywhere else when the regular season begins Wednesday evening in Philadelphia.
During the abbreviated camp that is winding down, no veteran stumbled so badly that management couldn't justify keeping him in the NHL, and no prospect dazzled so much that it would have been professional malpractice to assign him to a junior club or the Penguins' farm team in Wilkes-Barre.
Twenty-two of the 23 -- including Kasperi Kapanen, who continues to serve a coronavirus quarantine and won't be available to play until he completes it --- have one-way contracts, which mean they earn their NHL salary, regardless of where they're playing. And the lone exception, second-year defenseman John Marino, still is on his entry-level deal, but already has signed a six-year deal with an average annual value of $4.4 million.
The roster breaks down like this:
Forwards: Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jake Guentzel, Jason Zucker, Bryan Rust, Even Rodrigues, Brandon Tanev, Mark Jankowski, Jared McCann, Sam Lafferty, Teddy Blueger, Colton Sceviour and, when he is cleared, Kapanen.
Defensemen: Brian Dumoulin, Kris Letang, Mike Matheson, Marcus Pettersson, Cody Ceci, Juuso Riikola, Chad Ruhwedel and Marino.
Goalies: Tristan Jarry, Casey DeSmith.
Predictable as the roster was, though, the Penguins did make a few intriguing personnel decisions.
Their six-man taxi squad, formed in case teams need replacement players on short notice, is made of up forwards Anthony Angello, Drew O'Connor and Frederick Gaudreau, goalies Alex D'Orio and Maxime Lagace and defenseman P.O. Joseph.
NHL regulations allow the makeup of the taxi squad to be adjusted, and there's a pretty good chance the Penguins will do so in the near future, if only because they are unlikely to carry a total of four goaltenders. D'Orio is a candidate to join the Penguins' ECHL affiliate in Wheeling and if he is sent there, his replacement figures to be a defenseman or forward.
Joseph was a logical choice because he is the Penguins' top defensive prospect, and Angello has played some games at this level. Gaudreau, signed as a free agent after last season, had a good showing during camp and O'Connor, a free agent out of Dartmouth, proved that he is ready to make the transition from college hockey to the pros, which couldn't necessarily have been anticipated before practice began.
While there's no assurance that anyone on the taxi squad will appear in an NHL game this season, Mike Sullivan said its members were chosen primarily because management believes they could step in effectively if needed, although the trajectory of a player's development also was considered.
"One of our concerns is, if you put someone on the taxi squad and they practice on the taxi squad for a long period of time and they don't have an opportunity to get into games ... that's not a great scenario for players," he said.
Although the composition of the 23-man roster likely would have been altered only because of injuries or trades, some of players' roles still aren't settled.
The makeup of the bottom two lines, as well as the second and third defense pairings, remain the subject of some experimentation.
During Monday's practice, Jankowski skated between McCann and Tanev, while Blueger was flanked by Lafferty and Sceviour on the fourth. Tanev has been used primarily on the fourth line since last season, and Lafferty was with McCann and Jankowski as recently as last Friday.
"We've made some tweaks to that bottom six in the last few days, the line combinations," Sullivan said. "We may continue to tinker with that."
He noted that part of the motivation for moving players around was to figure out what options the coaching staff might have as the season progresses.
"We could do that (during camp), without having to do it on the fly," Sullivan said. "We'll continue to watch. We'll continue to assess."
On defense, Matheson was bumped up to the second pairing with Marino, and Pettersson is now working with Ceci on the third.
How long any of those grouping will remain intact is impossible to predict, but one factor for the coaches to consider is that it can take time to adapt to the nuances of a linemate or defense partner's game. That's something of which Pettersson is being reminded after having formed a productive partnership with Marino, dating to last season.
"It takes a little bit (to learn) all the habits of a player you're playing with," he said. "Especially a player who's new to our team. ... But I think stuff will figure it out if we just follow our system."
Of course, it's also possible that a change of co-workers could help to enhance a player's performance. In McCann's case, being with Jankowski might allow him to rediscover the goal-scoring touch that deserted him for the final 22 games of last season.
McCann said he isn't interested in reflecting on what went wrong in 2019-20 -- "I'm not going to dwell on it. I'm just going to move forward." -- but volunteered that Jankowski is "a very skilled player. He's a big guy. Does a lot of work in the corners. I think he really complements both me and (Tanev)."
If McCann is correct -- and if the line stays intact -- it could develop into kind of well-rounded group Sullivan wants his No. 3 unit to be.
"We would like that line to be a good 200-foot line for us," he said. "They're a line that has the potential to chip in and help us offensively by scoring goals, but they're also a line that should be hard to play against, that can play against anybody's top players."
That's not an unreasonable goal, but the McCann-Jankowski-Tanev line is very much a work in progress, which is pretty much the case for the entire team. For even though training camp is barely a week old, the season will get underway in mid-week.
"We knew going into this that it's a very short camp," Sullivan said. "It was going to be virtually impossible to get to every aspect of our game. We feel comfortable that we've established the foundation of how we're trying to play, and that we'll build on that foundation."
• Sceviour, who has been a penalty-killer throughout his career and will fill that role with the Penguins, offered this assessment of his team's power play: "It's a group of guys who have played together for a long period of time. They know where each other is without even having to look, which makes it very hard to kill. You think you have them in a spot that's advantageous to you and they make two quick passes through a seam or around the ice and back, and all of a sudden they have you spread out where they want you."
• The Penguins, as expected, announced that fans will not be allowed to attend any of their home games in January because of state and local regulation, which limit attendance at indoor events to 500. "It's going to be tough," Pettersson said. "We played like that in the (postseason) bubble, even though it was just for a few games. ... Definitely at home, you get so much energy from your own fans."
• Left winger Zach-Aston Reese, who is recovering from shoulder surgery, practiced with the taxi squad Monday. A team release said that he along with forward Sam Miletic and defensemen Zach Trotman and Josh Maniscalco, will be "appropriately assigned," but did not elaborate.