Short scrimmage has benefits
Moments after the Penguins wrapped up a 12-shift, intrasquad scrimmage, Penguins defenseman Jack Johnson shoveled his stick under a thick, fluffy layer of snow and tossed the snow high into the air. If the NHL’s restart is like Christmas in July for hockey fans, make it a white Christmas. And the forecast could continue once the games begin in Toronto.
The Penguins are scheduled to play their first three qualifying-round games at 8 p.m. Aug. 1, 3, 5 against Montreal. That means they’ll be the third playoff-intensity game on the same sheet of ice. The club is bracing for the possibility that the conditions might be similar to what they were Friday at the end of practice.
“We’re not sure what the quality of the ice is going to be like when we get there, depending on which game we get and how the ice holds up throughout the course of multiple games being played on it,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said.
That might be just a little bit more significant than it seems at first glance.
As a player, Sullivan represented his teams in the NHL’s fastest skater competition and has built the Penguins into one of the NHL’s most fleet-footed lineups. Likewise, when the Penguins talk about their match-up with Montreal, speed is one of the first words they use to describe the Canadiens. But what looks like a speed vs. speed matchup on paper might turn into something else on chipped ice.
“We might have to simplify our game and get accustomed to playing in a situation where the ice breaks down,” Sullivan said. “I think we have a team that’s built to thrive on any type or quality of ice. We have the ability to play a speed game if the ice is really good and we can skate on top of it. But we also have the ability to play in the trenches and play a grind game if the ice is in tough shape.”
The Penguins began preparing for that possibility Friday. They ended practice with the brief scrimmage during which each line got about six, 45-second shifts. Sullivan said he specifically scheduled this segment after about an hour of practice to simulate rough ice they might face in Toronto. The top six essentially faced the bottom six with major highlights at opposite ends.
Some fancy passing from the Sidney Crosby line set up Kris Letang for what could have been a point-blank goal. Goalie Tristan Jarry, however, dived back across his body to make an acrobatic save with the inside of his blocker.
Moments later, the bottom-six team stood up the Crosby line as they were entering the zone, creating an odd-man rush the other way. Jared McCann feathered a pass to Patrick Marleau, who beat Matt Murray on the blocker side.
Getting up to game speed
That intrasquad session was just an appetizer. The Penguins will continue to ramp up the intensity several notches Saturday when they play their first of three scheduled scrimmages. The format will be two 25-minute periods with some special situations tacked on.
“An important aspect to getting guys game-ready is putting them in game situations,” Sullivan said. “There’s a lot of subtleties of the game that you can’t simulate in a practice environment through a drill or you can’t simulate in [Phase 2] skate where you’re trying to social distance and there’s no contact.”
The goal of the scrimmages is to mimic a game-day environment as much as possible. The Penguins have scheduled the three scrimmages for different times to give players’ bodies the opportunity to feel what it’s like to be at their best when the puck drops. It also is good news for fans who need a hockey fix. The Penguins will livestream the scrimmage on four platforms: http://pittsburghpenguins.com, the Penguins app, the team’s YouTube channel and Facebook.
Still no sign of Hornqvist
Four practices into training camp and the Penguins still are missing their feisty net-front presence.
Patrick Hornqvist is one of nine Penguins who have been absent from practice. The team announced Monday that nine players are being held out due to a possible secondary exposure to COVID19. Per NHL policy, they have provided no additional information.
The Penguins have not announced the names of missing players, but it became fairly obvious which nine were missing from training camp. The others are defensemen Juuso Riikola, Pierre-Olivier Joseph, forwards Anthony Angello, Samuel Poulin, Adam Johnson, Sam Miletic and Philip Varone and goalie Alex D’Orio, With Hornqvist out, Evan Rodrigues and Sam Lafferty have split time on the third line’s right wing alongside McCann and Marleau. The other absences don’t figure to affect the starting lineup.
McCann gets shot on power play
A significant chunk of practice Friday was dedicated to special teams. Once again, McCann skated with the top unit. He was on the left wall, with Letang at the point, Evgeni Malkin in the right circle, Jake Guentzel in the high slot and Crosby working around the net.
“We think he’s really good there,” Sullivan said of McCann on the left wall. “He’s a guy that one of his greatest assets is his shooting ability and his scoring ability. He’s got a great shot. He’s got a great release. We like what we’ve seen when he’s been in that position on either of our power plays over the course of this year.”
Hornqvist is another candidate to skate for the top power-play unit. It remains to be seen if McCann is a placeholder until Hornqvist gets healthy or if he’s part of a long-term solution.