CRANBERRY, Pa. -- It's disrespectful, generally speaking, to ask someone the same question twice, as if in disbelief. So add a degree to that for the one time this summer when I asked Jim Rutherford once, twice, three times if he was serious that Juuso Riikola could crack the Penguins' defense in his first-ever North American experience.
"He can," Rutherford would reply, calmly, all three times.
Well, guess what: He can.
Yeah, yeah, there's one whole session of training camp now complete on this Friday at the Lemieux Sports Complex, and Riikola's now got all of a couple hours of experience sharing a sheet of ice with NHL players. But from this perspective, he stood out as much as anyone in the first scrimmage, paired with Brian Dumoulin. He skated effortlessly in all directions, twists and turns, stops and starts. He passed tape to tape. He pinched when he should pinch, supported when he should support. Got that big shot off a few times, too.
If there was any way to discern who were the veteran defensemen and who was the 24-year-old signed out of Finland this past summer, it sure wasn't obvious.
Mike Sullivan isn't a fan of open-the-package evaluations, but he didn't exactly hold back when this came up:
Not that it was any big deal to the young man himself.
"I just played my game," Riikola told me, still smiling as broadly as he has for several days here. "That was fun."
There will be issues related to the smaller rink, as Sullivan tellingly pointed out above. Olli Maatta mentioned that to me, as well. And yet ... OK, I'll stop here. It's one day. But it was a good day for the Penguins' defense, which looks legitimately eight-deep.
"Eight? This kid's good. He can push his way into this lineup," Maatta said. "He's got a great skating style. Kind of reminds me of Oliver Ekman-Larsson like that. He's strong, too. Stronger than he looks."
Maatta then raised an eyebrow at me.
"I told you last week he was good."
He did. Honest man.
• Sullivan took the first tangible step toward addressing any kind of rift with Phil Kessel, even if he'd never confess it as such, by reuniting Kessel with Evgeni Malkin for the scrimmage. Those two and Zach Aston-Reese were whizzing up and down the ice through the whole event and, to culminate, Malkin scored the tying goal late, then set up Kessel's winner for Team 2.
• Don't take Aston-Reese's assignment there too seriously. Or, for that matter, Daniel Sprong being planted immediately onto the top line alongside Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel. Sullivan's MO has been to spread key young guys through key lines early in camp to test them in various ways.
Sullivan called Sprong's showing "great," while adding all the requisite couching.
For me, one sequence stood out regarding Sprong: He turned the puck over at his defensive blue line with a blind backhand pass, got the puck right back after a fortunate ricochet, then burst up the left side to create a two-on-one with Crosby. Before looking off the goaltender, he fed sharply to the captain for a one-timer that was buried.
Quintessential Sprong.
This will be the buzz of the fan base, and I get that. I can't fathom this until Sprong learns to support the puck in the attacking zone. Crosby and Guentzel play beautifully off each other because of their ability to sustain possession. Sprong's a different player on offense, always gliding to get open for that devastating shot.
Could Crosby get Sprong a bunch of goals?
No doubt. But would the disruption to the collective work of Crosby and Guentzel be worth it?
Eh.
"It's a huge opportunity," Sprong said of playing with Crosby. "He's the best player in the world."
That's right. But that's also why he's the top priority.
Crosby, on playing with Sprong: "He's skilled. He's got a great shot, and he knows how to use it."
• Here are all of the NHL-relevant lines and pairings from the scrimmage:
Guentzel - Crosby - Sprong
Aston-Reese - Malkin - Kessel
Hagelin - Grant - Hayes
DiPauli - Dea - Rust
Johnson - Schultz
Dumoulin - Riikola
O'Neill - Ruhwedel
Addison - Oleksiak
• Neither Malkin nor Kessel made himself available to media, just so you know why they aren't quoted. They're the only two veterans who've yet to speak, including the recent informal skates. Malkin had ample cause with the informal skate Tuesday, since he was hurt. Kessel simply bolted early following both sessions. Specifically regarding Kessel, there are obviously questions to be asked, considering how the 2018 playoffs concluded. He'll need to do so at some point, or it'll become weird.
• I'm not complaining, mind you. I write this all the time, but my life isn't affected in the slightest when an athlete declines to speak. It's one fewer voice recording to transcribe. Just saying.
• Jack Johnson and Jamie Oleksiak were paired for the scrimmage, with Johnson looking plenty comfortable, as he'd promised, on the right side. Kris Letang and Olli Maatta, habitual workout partners, were paired in the Team 3 practice that followed the scrimmage. Might mean nothing, but they're further signs, as I'd been reporting, that the pairings won't be status quo.
• Oleksiak was excellent. Best defenseman on the ice. All over the rink. Especially at finding ways to get his shot through and with authority.
"I'm feeling really good," he told me.
• In defense of Rutherford's excessive stockpiling of centers this summer, Day 1 saw the team announce that Riley Sheahan has a lower-body injury and Derick Brassard is out with an illness. Sheahan's situation didn't sound great, with Sullivan divulging only that Sheahan's been dealing with the matter "for a couple weeks" and that the Penguins "will keep an eye on it." Sheahan wasn't at any of the informal skates, either.
• For a guy who spent all of last season with the Devils, big winger Jimmy Hayes sure was huffing, puffing and dragging in the closing conditioning drills. He looked exceptionally slow in the scrimmage, too. A stunningly poor first impression.
• Crosby, Guentzel and, of course, Letang made that skate look as physically demanding as a round of Yahtzee.
• This might not be the best team the Penguins have had in recent years -- can't suggest that casually when comparing to champions -- but it might be the deepest. Sullivan called this "the most competitive camp I've seen since I've been here" related to depth, and Hornqvist hardly ducked the issue when I brought it up:
• Hail and farewell to the truly great Henrik Zetterberg, forced into retirement Friday morning, per the Red Wings, by a degenerative back condition.
I asked Carl Hagelin, whose experience with Zetterberg took multiple forms -- he played college hockey in Michigan and watched Detroit closely, he was Zetterberg's teammate at the Sochi Olympics, and he obviously faced him in the NHL -- to discuss what Zetterberg meant.
“The things he could do with the puck, without the puck, offensive zone, defensive zone, he’s definitely a Hall of Famer,” Hagelin said. “You could just see what a great person he is. He’s a true captain, one of the best Swedes to play the game.”
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Penguins training camp, Cranberry Township, Sept. 14, 2018. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS