Development camp: Pickering's pickleball guarantee falls short

CRANBERRY, Pa. -- Owen Pickering gave a Mark Messier-style guarantee before the Penguins' development camp pickleball tournament on Sunday, assessing he and his partner Harrison Brunicke's odds of winning the tournament at "about 100%."

"I think we have full confidence that we're going to destroy everybody, to be honest," Pickering said in a social media video. "It's a foregone conclusion what's going to happen."

Pickering, to be clear, isn't being a jerk. He's being funny. The Penguins do some kind of team-building sport like this at camp every summer, and he was just as goofy and overly serious about flag football two years ago in his first camp.

In the end, Pickering and Brunicke's tournament didn't go so hot. Jack Beck and Gabe Klassen, a pair of AHL-contracted forwards, ended up winning the whole thing.

"We just didn't come through," a serious-sounding Pickering told me at Penguins development camp on Monday. "I had a lot of confidence going in, but I gotta put the blame on myself, for sure. I think that I came into it feeling too good."

The problem, Pickering explained, was that he trusted his "tennis-to-pickleball skills" too much. As it turned out, they aren't the same sport.

"I put the onus on myself," Pickering said. "I can't come out and guarantee stuff like that when there's good players. So I learned my lesson, for sure."

Brunicke, the Penguins' defenseman who was a second-round pick this summer, said he and Pickering started off strong, going 2-1.

"We beat (Brayden) Yager and (Tanner) Howe," Brunicke said. "So, that was a pretty good feeling. But I think after that, we kind of hit a wall and it didn't go too well."

Pickering offered heavy praise for some of his competition. Free agent invite forward Charlie Cerrato was "a stud." AHL contracted-forward Avery Hayes was "really good." Beck was also "really good," with Pickering noting that Beck's father used to be a professional tennis player.

"Zam Plante was horrible," Pickering said, loud enough so Plante could hear him from across the locker room. Plante, who had been sitting quietly in the corner just sipping his water, threw his arms up in mock outrage and said, "WHAT?" when he overheard. 

Another source backed Pickering's take up, saying that Plante realized early on that he wasn't good at pickleball and spent the tournament doing trickshots.

I asked Brunicke who he thought didn't do so well, and he laughed before saying, "Probably me and Picks!"