Rickard Rakell said that he felt like his "legs weren't the best" in his Penguins debut on Tuesday.
He has a pretty good excuse, though.
After being acquired by the Penguins in Monday's trade deadline deal, Rakell hopped on a flight at 11:30 p.m. Anaheim time. He landed in Pittsburgh just over eight hours later, at 10:40 a.m. local time.
After going straight to PPG Paints Arena to meet the Penguins' coaching staff, he made a brief stop at his hotel to eat and take a quick nap. He got back to the arena early before game time to get his equipment ready and meet his new teammates.
"It's been a lot going on in the last 24 hours," he said following the Penguins' 5-1 win over the Blue Jackets. "I think it was probably for the best just to rip the Band-Aid off and get to play right away."
Rakell played 14:08 in what Mike Sullivan later called a "solid game" for his debut.
While Rakell skated on the left wing alongside Jeff Carter and Kasperi Kapanen in a third-line role in this game, the coaching staff anticipates Rakell's role increasing moving forward.
Rakell made an impact in his very first shift early in the first period.
After taking the ice during a stoppage to cheers from the crowd, Rakell carried the puck into the Blue Jackets' end and set up Kapanen for a scoring chance in front of the net, but Kapanen couldn't get a shot off. The remainder of Rakell's first shift was just hard forechecking:
"I thought we had some good scoring chances," Rakell said of his line. "We could've easily had one or two tonight."
Late in the second he had a stretch late in the second period with multiple plays along the wall to keep the Blue Jackets from clearing the puck out of their end:
He showed good awareness on both sides of the puck throughout the game. He had a shift in the third period in which he won a battle for the puck along the boards. Then later in that shift when Vladislav Gavrikov gained possession of the puck, Rakell quickly stripped it off him:
"I thought he played real well," Sullivan said. "I think his skating is evident. His skillset is there, he made some plays."
You can expect to see more of the same moving forward from Rakell, who told me that he can "bring a little bit of everything" to the Penguins' lineup.
"Speed, skill, and try to play a physical game to win pucks back and create some chances in front of their net," he said of his game. "I'm just going to try to work in some chemistry as fast as I can moving forward. I'm really excited."
That chemistry won't be with Carter on the third line. Sullivan said that he doesn't "see (Rakell) being a left wing on Carter's line in the big picture."
Rakell played with Anaheim's skilled players. He had been playing on the right side of the second line with Trevor Zegras and Sonny Milano as of late this season, also spending some games on the right side of the first and third lines at times.
The Penguins didn't send Zach Aston-Reese, Dominik Simon, a second-round pick and one of their better prospects in Calle Clang to Anaheim just to bolster their bottom six. They expect Rakell to be a top-six player for them.
Given the circumstances surrounding today's game, though, it's not surprising that Rakell didn't debut playing top-six minutes.
"He's coming in with very little sleep coming across the country," Sullivan said. "He has very limited knowledge of how we're trying to play. We're trying to put players in positions to be successful. I think if we had put him in the top six, tonight would have been a real tough challenge. Maybe an unfair challenge for any player, for that matter."
It seems likely that Rakell gets promoted to Evgeni Malkin's line in the near future.
Rakell, a right-handed shot, gives the Penguins some versatility when it comes to line combinations, too. Though he had been playing mostly right wing on Anaheim over the last several months, he had played a lot of left wing before that. He's had success on both sides, too. He had back-to-back 30-plus-goal seasons in Anaheim in 2016-17 and 2017-18 playing primarily left wing, and he's on pace for a 20-plus goal season this year, having played primarily right wing.
"I would say I'm really comfortable playing both sides," Rakell said. "I'm fine either way."
PENGUINS
Rickard Rakell in warmups ahead of his Penguins debut on Tuesday.
Rakell's coming into the Penguins' locker room already familiar with some of the personnel. Assistant coach Mike Vellucci was his head coach in the OHL for three seasons. He was teammates with Danton Heinen for a season and a half in Anaheim. He was teammates with fellow Swede Marcus Pettersson in Anaheim for parts of two seasons, and Pettersson said that the two got "really close, really fast." Rakell's wife is from Pettersson's hometown of Skelleftea, so they live there in the summers, and Rakell and Pettersson train together.
Rakell seemed a bit starstruck in talking about some of the stars with whom he now shares a locker room.
"All those players, I think growing up those are your idols," he said. "To be in the same room as those guys, I'm just going to try to take it all in, try to learn from them and just try to pick up on small details in their game that could improve my game. I'm just going to try to be a sponge and soak it all in."
For Ron Hextall to go out and pay the price he did for a player like Rakell gives the Penguins' players a boost moving forward. It signals to players that management really thinks that this team could make a run.
"I think it shows they want to win and puts us all on notice that we have something special here," Jake Guentzel said. "You could just see how good of a player (Rakell) is out there. He's going to help our team a lot. We're happy to have a guy like that on our team. It's just exciting times for us."
