CRANBERRY, Pa. -- The Penguins' defense pairings remained the same through much of training camp.
The top pairing of Brian Dumoulin and Kris Letang, of course, stayed together. Mike Matheson then skated with John Marino on the second pairing, while Marcus Pettersson worked on the third pairing alongside either Mark Friedman or Chad Ruhwedel.
When Matheson missed the Penguins' first three games of the season with a nagging lower-body injury, it forced the Penguins to change up the pairings. Pettersson was reunited with his partner from last season in Marino, and Friedman and Ruhwedel formed the third pairing.
When Matheson returned from his injury and made his season debut on Tuesday evening against the Stars, the pairings didn't revert to the ones we most frequently saw in training camp. Pettersson stuck with Marino, and Matheson played on the third pairing with Ruhwedel.
"I think they've played extremely well," assistant coach Todd Reirden said of the pairing following Wednesday's practice. "Something that was discussed in the offseason was how we were going to move forward without Cody Ceci, and who would be in different pairings. With Mike Matheson missing early on with an injury, we went back to a comfortable pairing in John and Marcus together."
In terms of pure end results, the Pettersson-Marino pairing is the best pairing the Penguins have used this season. At five-on-five, they've been on the ice for five goals for (twice as many as any other pairing) and they're the only pairing to not be on the ice together for a single goal against.
One of those goals came from Marino himself in Tuesday's shootout loss to the Stars:
"His read, his feel in that situation, the hockey sense, that's one of those ones where he felt the play is coming to that spot," Reirden said of Marino jumping up in the play for that goal. "John has some gifts there. Those are things we're continuing to try to maximize and help him grow as a defenseman in this league."
The Penguins have controlled 59.04 of the shot attempts, 56.82 percent of the shots on goal, and 66.48 of the expected goals when the Pettersson-Marino pairing is on the ice this season.
"I think we're both playing at a pretty high level," Pettersson said of his pairing with Marino. "You can see his game is really coming along, and he's playing well right now. It's easy to feed off that."
Reirden said that both Pettersson and Marino came into this season knowing that the had more to their games than they showed last season.
Pettersson said that in his case, he focused on just coming into this season in a "good headspace to be aggressive" on the ice. Training-wise, he also worked hard on his skating over the summer. Marino trained with Dumoulin over the summer -- something Reirden called "a great decision by John, and a great leadership move by Brian" -- and came into this year with some added size and strength.
Reirden said that in his evaluations with players, it's important to him that players understand that their opportunities are earned based on merit. And while the Pettersson-Marino pairing may not have been the second pairing the coaching staff envisioned at the start of the season, they've earned their spot and will continue to play second-pairing minutes for the foreseeable future.
"It's theirs until they lose it to someone else," Reirden said. "In this situation, that pairing will be staying together. We hope for them to continue to play as they have been."
MORE FROM PRACTICE
• Sidney Crosby didn't skate, but Reirden said that it was a result of a planned day off.
• Mark Friedman remains day-to-day with a lower-body injury.
• Lemieux Complex goaltending coach/Penguins emergency backup goaltender Mike Chiasson joined the group for practice, even though Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith were both healthy and participated. Reirden said that Chiasson's participation was a result of the format the practice took, with the team breaking up into mini-groups for specialized work.
"Just with the amount of pucks that we're going to be coming Tristan and Casey's way, we decided to have Mike out there," Reirden said. "He's always extremely useful in that department for us."
• Practice lasted about 40 minutes, There was no five-on-five work, and no special teams work. Reirden worked with the defense at one end of the ice, while Mike Vellucci and Ty Hennes worked with the wingers at the other end. Mike Sullivan and Matt Cullen worked with the centers exclusively on faceoffs at center ice for nearly a full 30 minutes, with a couple of wingers like Jake Guentzel, Zach Aston-Reese, Drew O'Connor, and Sam Lafferty occasionally migrating over to work on some draws.
A couple of other forwards have migrated over to Cullen’s faceoff class. Here’s Aston-Reese and Guentzel. pic.twitter.com/gc7k0VHWv9
— Taylor Haase (@TaylorHaasePGH) October 20, 2021
"Today was a planned day in terms of doing a number of different things that we found that we hadn't been able to get to with our normal practices," Reirden explained. "Geez, I don't think we even had last year three days in a row of practice. So this was an opportunity for us to work on some individual skills."
• It was definitely a light mood around the team, guys were having fun with a lot of laughs. To cap it off, practice ended with a shootout drill that came down to Dominik Simon and Aston-Reese in the final two. Aston-Reese prevailed, and Simon lost. I asked Pettersson about it after practice, and he confirmed that the shootout drill was the return of Mustache Boy, and that there were actually two losers who have to have mustaches for the next month.
"Dom Simon got it today," Pettersson said. "And then I think Casey (DeSmith) got one too, because he let in three goals in a row. So they've got to grow a mustache for a month. We'll see how they look."
• The Penguins' penalty kill is 9-for-10 to start the season. I asked McGinn what he thinks has the penalty kill clicking so well this early on.
"I think right now we're just keeping it simple," he said. "Before each game, we're really going over what the team's strengths are we're playing against. We're just really focusing on taking away their main options and just clogging up that middle of the ice to not let those seam passes through and stuff like that. We just need to continue to go out each day and keep working on it."
