THE FUN & ONLY

While the Penguins were happy to see their old teammate this weekend, it was with a knowing wariness that they approached their few hours in Minnesota.

The Penguins on Friday ventured onto Marc-Andre Fleury’s home turf when they arrived at Minnesota’s Xcel Energy Center for their morning skate. Sidney Crosby and Co. were on full alert, knowing they had better keep an eye on their equipment.

And clothes. And phones. And wallets. All of their personal belongings, really.

While Penguins players from time to time prank unsuspecting teammates

— they are still laughing about one Jason Zucker pulled off last season — those playful antics have been toned down significantly since Fleury departed Pittsburgh.

“Flower over the years ... ” Kris Letang said recently, “he was one of a kind.”

Fleury, now with the Wild, has been mum about his plans beyond this season. But Friday might have been his last chance to prank Crosby and his old teammates.

The affable, acrobatic goalie got Crosby when the Wild were in Pittsburgh back in December. The morning of their game, he tinkered with the captain’s laundry bag and scribbled on Crosby’s car windows with an erasable marker. Allegedly. He also put clear tape all over Evgeni Malkin’s visor. Letang got off easy. Fleury “borrowed” his black helmet so Letang had to wear white at the morning skate.

Crosby got revenge. He wouldn’t fess up to what he did, but he later mentioned that somebody’s phone got sewn into their pants pocket just before Christmas.

Anyway, Crosby clearly got a kick out of their old prank wars back in the day.

“It used to be daily,” he said with a grin. “Your head had to be on a swivel. You just get used to it. It’s just the environment, and you adapt to it. But it’s fun. Once it starts to happen, there’s retaliation. There’s no end. It just keeps going.”

Fleury’s pranks remain the stuff of legend inside their dressing room. Even players who didn’t overlap with Fleury here are in awe retelling secondhand stories.

Here’s a quick list of some of them: He loosened the lids on Gatorade bottles on the bench. Put shaving cream in white towels and baby powder in hairdryers. Moved his teammates’ cars to different locations. Sneaked into their hotel room to crank up the heat or call down to the front desk for an early wakeup call.

One of the most famous ones happened while HBO was following the team in 2010-11 ahead of the Winter Classic. He relocated all of the furniture from Ben Lovejoy and Mark Letestu’s hotel room out into the hallway by the elevator.

“That’s a lot of work, right?” said Jeff Carter, now in his 19th year. “I don’t think I ever played with a guy like Fleury, where he’s just constantly doing [expletive].”

Bryan Rust could only shake his head when recalling one of Fleury’s classics.

“My rookie year, I’m 90% sure Fleury took my street clothes and hung them up in the rafters for practice. He basically put a nameplate on the back of my jacket and hung it up in the rafters, probably 15 to 20 feet above the ice,” he said. “All you can do is laugh about it. It was almost like a welcome to the NHL moment.”

Crosby noted Fleury did something similar shortly after Justin Schultz arrived.

While he will go down as one of the greatest ever, Crosby always wanted to just be one of the guys. One way to do it was pulling off a few harmless pranks.

Crosby smiled wide while talking about all of the “good ones” he has witnessed over the years. Cutting a guy’s tie too short. Nailing his shoes to the bench inside the dressing room. Putting heat balm in socks or on the earpiece on a phone.

But he said his absolute favorite is filling someone’s car with packing peanuts.

“I may or may not have been part of the packing peanuts one,” he said, insisting he was not one of the culprits who got Pierre-Olivier Joseph last season.

Joseph walked out of the rink one day and as he neared his car, he saw it had been filled from top to bottom with little Styrofoam nuggets. He thought it was funny at first. Not so much two hours later when he was still emptying it out.

Months later, whenever he turned on his AC, more peanuts would fly out at him.

Joseph had a few primary suspects in mind, but none of his teammates would tell him who did it. It wasn’t until after the season that Zucker finally came clean.

“It was a good prank,” conceded Joseph, saying the team needs more of that.

For the veteran-laden Penguins, it still goes on from time to time. Jake Guentzel accused Chad Ruhwedel of grabbing a giant bag of popcorn from PPG Paints Arena and dumping it all over his doorstep. Guentzel got him back this fall.

Guentzel also said that when Brian Dumoulin was on the team, he passed Rust’s house on his way to work. Each time, he would flip up the flag on his mailbox.

But in terms of Penguins pranking on an epic proportion, it just hasn’t been the same since Fleury, a Hall of Fame goalie and character, left the Penguins.

“I just think it’s so much work,” Letang said of his former teammate. “But for a guy to put that much dedication into pranking people, I think that is pretty funny.”