Team adjusts to hard lessons on fans, masks, more

Hey, at least there was progress off the ice.

Amid maybe the Penguins' most miserable loss of the winter, 4-3 to the Flyers following an early three-goal lead Thursday night, the team's front office and related staff tried to adjust to some criticism of how they and the NHL navigated aspects of the fans' return to PPG Paints Arena two nights earlier. Per my sources, the preparation for this took up the better part of the previous 48 hours. 

And, at least from this press box perspective, it appeared to pay off an all fronts:

MASKS

The most visible issue Tuesday night, a day after Gov. Tom Wolf allowed stadiums and arenas across Pennsylvania to resume admitting crowds at 20% capacity outdoors and 15% capacity indoors -- 2,800 for both of these games -- was that an inordinate number of fans flouted the team's rule that masks must be worn in the arena at all times except when actively eating. It's impossible to gauge how many, but my own estimate would be 1 in every 8 or 10.

At this game, I didn't see much of the kind. A handful at most, and even those might've been eating or drinking at a leisurely pace.

It helped, per my sources, that the team had more time to bring in more ushers. Gov. Wolf's announcement came Monday, leaving the Penguins less than a day to round up workers who are part-time and, thus, not on call. Those who could make it did, per one usher with whom I spoke, but the majority couldn't. And that left many of the arena's sections unattended by an usher, lessening the enforcement/encouragement to abide by the mask rule.

I couldn't obtain any numbers, but ushers were far more visible at this game, walking up and down the aisles periodically to check.

VIDEO MESSAGES

Plainly worded messages were put on the video board reminding fans of the mask policy, new since Tuesday. Not all of it was heavy-handed, though: One video had goaltender Casey DeSmith joking that he, too, wears a mask, and so should everyone else in the place.

SECTION USAGE

More than two-thirds of the upper deck was closed off Tuesday, but it was the opposite Thursday, allowing fans to spread out even more. That didn't impact the seating areas much, since distance already had been beyond ample, but it did alleviate some heavy congestion I'd witnessed on one of the concourses -- behind the net where the Penguins shoot (or don't shoot) twice -- before faceoff and during intermissions.

The latter was assisted by additional floor signage and verbal advice being given by arena workers to stay spread out in those areas.

Much, much smoother.

FAKE CROWD NOISE

This one bugged quite a few fans who'd reached out to me, and I found it curious myself that artificial, ambient crowd noise continued to get piped into PPG Paints Arena all through the game Tuesday. Even though the crowd on hand was making more than enough to make the setting feel infinitely more natural than it had in 359 days.

That, it turns out, was an NHL call that applied to all teams.

Despite that, the Penguins heard their fans -- the real ones -- and pulled the plug for this game, anyway. And the actual crowd noise again was just fine ... until Claude Giroux ruined everything.

THAT PHOTOSHOP

Maybe most embarrassing from the Tuesday game was that one of the Penguins' social media employees opted to photoshop masks onto a few unmasked fans in a Getty picture for a company tweet. And when our Taylor Haase noticed that and tweeted about it herself ...

... it caused a predictable stir on social media, one that extended into some mainstream media, as well.

Here's the story, again per my sources: This was a low-level employee who acted wholly on their own and with zero approval for that tweet or any related concept. The employee was disciplined.

That's it. Nothing else to it.

I know everyone loves a hot social media controversy, but one won't be uncovered here. I've known the sources who shared this information with me for the better part of my life, and I trust them implicitly. More relevant, I know that if they had been aware of something like that tweet beforehand, they'd never have approved it.

As I'd written after the first game with fans, this was going to require a learning curve for all concerned. There'll be other bumps along the way, whether it's at PPG Paints Arena or PNC Park, just as there were some when the Steelers were briefly allowed to open Heinz Field to 5,000 fans this past fall. It's a crazy time.

Bottom line: The sooner all this settles, and both the team and the fans do better, the greater the chance of restrictions being further loosened.