CRANBERRY, Pa. -- We're officially fewer than two weeks away from the Penguins' regular-season opener against the Coyotes at PPG Paints Arena on Oct. 13.
Following training camp practice at the Lemieux Complex here in Cranberry on Friday, I hopped around the Penguins' locker room searching for their keys to success this season.
"A lot," Brian Dumoulin told me when I asked what needs to go right for this group. "Obviously we need to stay healthy. That’s obviously one of the biggest things that we’ve been dealing with the past few years. Some things you can’t control with that, some things you can, so I think that’s first and foremost. But I think we gotta come together as a group also, especially earlier on and be all on the same page. We have a lot of familiar faces back from last year, we gotta welcome the new guys and become a team quickly."
I quickly realized staying healthy would be the most common answer, so I made sure to ask what needs to go right aside from staying healthy from there on out.
"I think we just gotta come together quickly," Tristan Jarry told me. "We’ve got a lot of new bodies, new guys, and I think just coming together quick and learning all the systems and being good at it. I think we have a very good team this year and I think we’ll have a chance to do something good."
That's two players stressing the importance of coming together as a team and doing it quickly, but what does coming together truly look like?
"I think with any team, it’s consistency," Sidney Crosby said. "You look at our division, it’s pretty tight. Just making sure that we find consistency in our game. Points in October are just as important in April, so I think just making sure that we get better as it goes on, but we’re consistent with it too."
Jake Guentzel shares Crosby's belief that the biggest thing is to avoid giant swings in performance from one game to another. One of the best ways to be consistent is to simply stay out of your own way and not beat yourself.
"I think we just gotta be consistent and play our game," Guentzel said. "When we play our game and manage the puck, I think that’s when we’re at our best, so we can’t just be careless, that’s when we get ourselves in trouble. If we manage the puck and play the game we know we can play, we can beat anyone."
Last season, we saw both sides of that. When the Penguins went on their 10-game winning streak, they were executing Mike Sullivan's system flawlessly by suffocating opponents with calculated pressure all over the ice, taking care of the puck and minimizing risk while continuing to do the things that brought them offense.
When they weren't, teams diced them up in transition and pounced on their glaring mistakes.
"I think just being able to find that continuity and that consistency, not only from game-to-game, but period-to-period, shift-to-shift so we can put together full 60-minute efforts," Bryan Rust said.
When I asked the same question to Sullivan, he didn't mention consistency, rather bringing up the importance of controlling what you can control and expecting that things aren't going to go your way every time, because they simply won't.
"I just think resilience. We’re just gonna stay in the moment, we’re gonna try to get better every day," Sullivan said. "We’ve got to be able to fight through the challenges that this league inevitably presents. It’s a hard league, it’s hard to win. Things don’t always go your way, we’ve gotta make sure we react the right way."
MORE FROM CAMP
• Teddy Blueger remains day-to-day with an upper-body injury sustained on Wednesday. He did not skate on Friday, per Sullivan.
• Jeff Carter, also sidelined with an upper-body injury, skated on his own prior to practice on Thursday and again prior to practice on Friday.
• Sam Poulin was not out on the ice with either of the Penguins' groups on Friday. Sullivan said afterward that Poulin has been excused for a couple of days for family matters.
• Forward Jonathan Gruden and defenseman Taylor Fedun have been absent for the past several days. Both of them are day-to-day, per Sullivan. I saw Gruden walking around the rink without any wraps or braces on his body, and he didn't have a noticeable hitch in his giddyup.
• The remaining players on the training camp roster were split into two groups again, one comprised of the NHLers and one comprised of Wilkes-Barre/Scranton players and prospects.
•The forward lines and D-pairings of the NHL group remained the same as they were Thursday, minus Poulin, who was rotating in with the fourth line.
Jake Guentzel - Sidney Crosby - Rickard Rakell
Jason Zucker - Evgeni Malkin - Bryan Rust
Danton Heinen - Radim Zohorna - Kasperi Kapanen
Brock McGinn - Ryan Poehling - Josh Archibald
Brian Dumoulin - Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson - Jeff Petry
Ty Smith - Jan Rutta
P.O Joseph - Chad Ruhwedel/Mark Friedman
• The Penguins held a brief controlled scrimmage on Friday, led by Sullivan. Team Gold "won" 2-0, with the goals coming from Drake Caggiula and McGinn.
Caggiula scored first after flying down the right wing and blowing a wrist shot past Casey DeSmith on the short side.
On McGinn's goal, Archibald raced down the ice and beat a defender to a loose puck right before slipping a pass across the offensive zone to a streaking McGinn. With plenty of time and space, McGinn ripped it to the back of the net.
• After a period of the controlled scrimmage, the Penguins got into special teams work. Here are the power play personnel for both units:
PP1
Bryan Rust - Sidney Crosby - Jake Guentzel
Kris Letang - Evgeni Malkin
PP2
Danton Heinen - Rickard Rakell - Jason Zucker/Radim Zohorna
Jeff Petry - Ty Smith
Zohorna rotated in with Heinen and Zucker, and as you'd expect, the 6-foot-6 forward was parked right at the front of the net when the unit was able to set up shop.
• On Thursday, Joseph was in place of Petry on the second power play unit. I suspected the reason for this was to get Petry some work in on the penalty kill. Petry was back with the second unit on Friday.
• Last season Kapanen played over 125 minutes on the power play. During that time he did not score and totaled just two primary assists to go along with three secondary assists, so it's not all that surprising that he isn't being given a look there. He has, however, been getting a lot of work on the penalty kill, including during Tuesday's preseason loss to the Red Wings. He killed penalties for three seasons with the Maple Leafs, and it appears he'll do so again this season.
• Poehling also got plenty of work with the penalty killers on Friday. Because Carter and Blueger are both centers and kill penalties, they didn't have a choice but to give Poehling some reps, but it wouldn't shock me to see him get some time there even with both Carter and Blueger in the lineup. Poehling has right around 30 minutes of penalty-killing experience in his NHL career.
• The lines used by the WBS/prospects group remained unchanged from Thursday:
Drake Caggiula - Drew O'Connor - Valtteri Puustinen
Filip Hallander - Kyle Olson - Alex Nylander
Raivis Ansons - Lukas Svejkovsky - Nathan Legare
Jamie Devane - Ty Glover - Corey Andonovski
• On defense, Owen Pickering, Nolan Collins, Colin Swoyer, Chris Ortiz, Xavier Ouellet, Mitch Reinke, Josh Maniscalco, Jon Lizotte and Jack St. Ivany all rotated with the WBS/prospects group.
• I asked O'Connor about the struggle of not being able to crack the NHL group and what he needs to do to get there.
"Obviously I want to get back in that first group, so I think just continuing to work hard, doing the little things right, just taking advantage of every opportunity I get," he told me. "Today was good to get out there for the scrimmage. I’m just trying to play hard and get myself back in the group."
• Kapanen received a new pair of skates after practice on Friday. He was in the locker room checking them out well after most players had left. He was absolutely thrilled to show them off to Zucker.
