Mike Sullivan lets out a laugh during the Penguins' practice Friday. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS

Penguins

Kovacevic: The challenge will be the recharge

Jan 6, 2017 • 8:37 pm

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"Play hard!"

Mike Sullivan boomed that out Friday afternoon, loud enough to peel paint from the PPG Paints Arena walls, but he might as well have whispered.

Not that he didn't have an impact on the Penguins' practice. It absolutely did. In fact, the pace went from excruciatingly slow to ... painfully slow. A couple players churned it up a bit, a rare crisp pass connected, and Patric Hornqvist whipped a wrister through the five-hole for a goal.

He even raised an arm.

One arm.

Halfway.

It was is if the guy had spent the past week in Cancun.

"I spent the past week in Cancun," Hornqvist would say later. "That's where I was."

Yep. And he had plenty of company. Not on the Mexican coastlines, necessarily, but in terms of resting, relaxing, getting a tan -- everyone except pale-as-a-ghost Ian Cole, who was being relentlessly ribbed for that -- pretty much everyone got away. Sidney Crosby went to Vail for some quality time in the Rockies because "I kind of miss having a winter." Evgeni Malkin took his talents to South Beach. Trevor Daley "just enjoyed some awesome time with my family."

And the boring guys just kept right on skating.

"Yeah, that was us," Olli Maatta said of himself and Eric Fehr, who hooked up twice for private sessions at the Penguins' practice facility in Cranberry Township. He smiled sheepishly as he spoke. "No life, right? Just hockey."

Well, on this day at a few eager minutes before the scheduled 3 p.m. start, hockey became life again for the Stanley Cup champions. And it didn't take much to see that, for all the value inherent in physical and mental recovery in the NHL's newly mandated bye week for all 30 teams this season, one of them is most definitely not coming back sharp.

I asked Sullivan, after his unusual two-hour session that saw multiple drills, a couple scrimmages, a hard skate and even a Zamboni break, about the challenge he and his staff faced.

"It's never easy," the coach replied. "These guys are such well conditioned athletes that, when they take time off, five days seems like an eternity. Our strength coaches put together a game plan for these guys on this break, to give them the best chance when we came back to feel as good as they can feel. But it's very difficult to simulate game situations."

Which is why Sullivan eschewed the standard bag-skate and involved pucks and the like.

"What we tried to do today as a coaching staff was give them a little taste of games. We had a lot of puck exchange to get them feeling the puck, moving the puck, sharing the puck. And we had some compete in the practice, where we literally put them in a compete mindset. So that was the rationale behind it. But it's never easy. Not when you're an athlete used to playing and practicing every day. This was a long time."

The Penguins' players have expressed decidedly varying sentiments on the bye week over the past few months. The initial outlook was that it would be a boon to their team more than most, given that June 12 in San Jose marked their 104th total game last season. But as the league's resultant compacted schedule took a toll -- they played 38 games in 91 days, or once every 2.4 days -- that was boomeranging back.

I asked Kris Letang, maybe the most vocal supporter of the bye week, if it helped or hurt:

In the very short term, I've got to think it'll hurt. And by that term, I'm focusing squarely on the first game back Sunday against Tampa Bay. On top of having played all this time, the Lightning has a game the previous afternoon, Saturday in Philadelphia. Those guys will show up here, at least theoretically, in peak game ... well, everything. And it won't help that the Penguins moved faceoff back to 5:08 p.m., to accommodate fans wanting to catch the Steelers' playoff game. That's more rust for the home team, more rest for the visitors.

But one game is one game. And what'll matter most from this break, at least as I see it, are these three factors:

1. Crosby stays hot.
2. Malkin stays hot.
3. Justin Schultz never wakes up.

And you'd better believe the latter has moved into that level of conversation, with seven goals, 12 assists and a plus-17 rating in the past month.

"Oh, I'm still feeling good," Schultz answered when I asked if he'd stay that hot.

So, he kept skating through the break?

"Nope."

So, he did something on the side that could explain why he was one of the precious few buzzing all over the rink in that otherwise slo-mo practice?

"Not really. I just kind of relaxed, watched TV."

"Nothing's cooling him off," Maatta interjected from the next stall. "He's got as many points in a week as I'll have all year."

"Schultzie doesn't even need to practice," Daley chimed in. "He's too hot to practice."

They were all being ridiculous, of course -- at least I think they were -- but that generally came across as encouraging.

Where Crosby and Malkin are concerned, the precedent is infinitely greater.

The captain has been nothing less than the planet's unquestioned best player since ... wow, the third month of last season, right? He's fallen three points off the league scoring lead, 42 points against the 45 of the Oilers' Connor McDavid, who's played eight more games. But his 26 goals are still five more than anyone else, and his 1.31 points per game don't have a peer, either.

Neither does his work ethic, as he displayed again Saturday by lingering on the ice a half-hour after an already long practice to do ... what else?

Small wonder the first four words of his post-practice gathering with the media were these: "Happy to be back."

This isn't someone who engages in a whole lot of things that aren't hockey.

"It was good to have a break, good to have a few days," Crosby said as if there was a 'but' coming. "But it's good to get some work in. The majority of the guys on a day like this, I think, are going to be rusty. But I also think we should end up with a lot of energy coming out of this. Today was more about just getting a sweat going, getting your feet back under you. Tomorrow, we'll get ready for a game and getting back to the way we need to play."

It was Malkin, not Crosby or McDavid, who had the league's scoring lead when the Penguins parted. And he achieved that 43rd point in style ...

... and, going well before that, this might be the best Geno we've seen in a couple years. He's skating authoritatively, shooting first, distributing smoothly ... all the ideal traits of his game.

He didn't sound particularly interested in letting that fade.

"Good, good vacation," Malkin began his session. "Like go to pool. Like chilling all day."

He did say "chilling." He really did.

Proof positive that he was, indeed, chilling in Miami: