Dumoulin: Penguins 'will have an edge' in return

Brian Dumoulin didn't want all of this time away from the game. Not after he'd just spent nearly a half-season recovering from a serious injury.

His teammates weren't happy about the NHL being forced to suspend operations because of the coronavirus pandemic, either. Not only because of all the grief and misery it has caused, but because they seemed to be getting in synch for the stretch drive and playoffs.

But despite the unfortunate timing of the league's shutdown, Dumoulin believes that the Penguins' experience -- both collectively and as individuals -- should work to their benefit if the 2019-20 season resumes at some point this spring or summer.

Or, at least, that his club might suffer less because of the extended layoff than some others.

"Obviously, everyone right now is in the same (situation), where no one is practicing as a team," Dumoulin told a conference call Tuesday. "No one has an upper hand right now. It's ... unprecedented, where we would jump right into a playoff race (after an extended break), so it's hard to say if any team has an advantage here, or anything like that.

"But obviously, with our playoff success in the past and some of the guys we have on our team ... we know, as a group, the type of individuals we have as a team, so we know everyone right now is doing everything they can to put their best foot forward and that when we do come back, they're going to be ready to go.

"We have a very -- I wouldn't say wise -- but responsible group and I do think that's going to benefit us when we do come back and play. So I think we will have an edge."

If the Stanley Cup playoffs are held sometime during the warm-weather months, the circumstances will unlike any in the league's history. Games almost certainly would be contested in empty arenas, rather than unfolding in front of thousands of animated, occasionally agitated, fans.

None of that, Dumoulin said, would detract from the accomplishment of earning a Cup, which would be the Penguins' sixth in franchise history and their third in five years.

"They can't take it away from you," he said. "You're winning the Stanley Cup, no matter where. If we were playing in my driveway, that would be fine with me, if we were playing for the Stanley Cup. You don't need much other motivation than that."

If hockey does return in the reasonably near future -- and if the Penguins are to make a serious run at another championship -- Dumoulin almost certainly would play a prominent role.

He does, after all, work on the No. 1 defense pairing, where his responsible style allows Kris Letang to take some risks to capitalize on his offensive talents, and is a reliable penalty-killer.

Many of Dumoulin's personal stats tends to be pretty pedestrian -- for example, he has one goal and seven assists in 28 games during the current season -- although his 21 minutes, three seconds of ice time per game is pretty hard to overlook, given that Letang (25:44) is his only teammate who averages more.

Dumoulin, though, echoed a point he has made more than once: The numbers about which he cares the most have nothing to do with goals or assists or blocked shots or time-on-ice.

"I know if I played a good game, or a bad game," he said. "I don't really have to look at points or stats or anything like that. I have a pretty good memory, shift-by-shift, of what happened, if I got beat or I missed a chance or anything like that. Some people might base (self-evaluations) on points, but that's not me. I'd rather win the game than get a point, any day."

The Penguins had to do that without him for three months, while Dumoulin recovered from surgery to repair an ankle tendon that was sliced by an errant skate Nov. 30 in St. Louis.

He missed 37 games because of that injury, and got into just five between the time his rehabilitation was complete and when the NHL put the season on hold March 12.

That was, however, enough for him regain confidence in his ability to perform at the level he had reached before being hurt, and actually might have helped to prepare him to cope with this unscheduled disruption in the schedule.

"I'm grateful that I was able to get those five games in before the break," Dumoulin said. "Just mentally, it's going to benefit me, being able to know what my routine was, what I needed to do to get back. I felt like when I was playing, I was getting back to being a very solid player.

"I'd never been out for that long in my career, so I had to prove to myself that I could be able to come back and still compete, play at a high level at the most important, crucial part of the season. I think I did that. I'm satisfied with how I came back.

"I wasn't on skates for about three months there, so it's sort of similar to what's going on right now, except I'm not nursing an injury. I at least proved to myself that I could not skate for three months and still come back and play."

He did it pretty well, and the Penguins were just beginning to do likewise.

After losing six games in a row -- and looking pretty bad in the process -- the Penguins went 3-2 in the five games after Dumoulin returned. That stretch was highlighted by a 5-2 victory in New Jersey March 10, in what proved to be the Penguins' final game before the shutdown.

"You could see in that New Jersey game," he said. "I feel like we were really coming together."

When, or whether, the Penguins will get another opportunity to do that -- and to show that the adversity they endured truly improved the group -- remains to be seen.

"I really felt like that would have made us stronger, going through those ups and those downs," Dumoulin said. "Right now, we're just playing a waiting game to see what happens."