CRANBERRY, Pa. -- One of the questions coming into this training camp was how things would shake out with the Penguins' nine NHL defensemen.
While all spots are technically "up for grabs," it seemed pretty evident that the first five spots on the blue line were locked up, belonging to Brian Dumoulin, Kris Letang, Marcus Pettersson, Jeff Petry and Jan Rutta.
That left Ty Smith, P.O Joseph, Mark Friedman and Chad Ruhwedel competing for that last spot in the lineup.
Dumoulin and Letang are an established No. 1 pair, and Pettersson and Petry have been together for most of training camp. That leaves an opening on the third pairing next to Rutta.
Ever since the Penguins divided their training camp groups and created a clear NHL group, there hasn't been much experimenting with the defense pairings. Rutta has been paired with Smith in the practices and their preseason games, while Joseph, Friedman and Ruhwedel rotate as an extra fourth pairing in practices and watch the preseason games from afar.
With just over a week left before the start of the regular season, the defense pairings aren't set in stone, as Mike Sullivan alluded to after practice on Tuesday.
"We’ve got a healthy competition amongst our group on defense," Sullivan said. "We recognize that we’ve got some really difficult decisions coming up; those are good problems to have from our standpoint."
But at least for now, the pairings seem to be set in pencil, with Smith rounding out the third pairing with Rutta. I asked Sullivan for his thoughts on the pairing after Monday's preseason game in Detroit, and I thought it was interesting that he didn't want to offer much of an assessment yet.
"I thought they had moments where they were good and they had moments where they weren't so good," he said. "You could probably say that about all of our guys. I just think that's the nature of the game at this time of year — we've got to get better. We're just going to continue to watch here throughout the rest of the camp. I'm reluctant to assess anything at this point. I'm trying to reserve judgment just to try to get as big of a picture as we can just by watching these guys play."
I spoke with both Smith and Rutta after Wednesday's practice at the Lemieux Complex about what it's been like playing with each other, and more.
The pairing is still very much a work in progress.
"It's good, I think everyday we've been together the whole camp," Rutta told me. "Every day, we're working to get a little better. I think Game 2 from Game 1 was much better. I'm just pretty excited to play with a player like Ty. I think it's only going to get better."
It's been clear throughout camp that the coaching staff loves Smith's offensive potential. They like the way he moves along the offensive blue line and can get pucks through to the net, and how good he is at distributing the puck to teammates for opportunities. The knock on his game would be his defensive game, with Sullivan phrasing it as there being "opportunity to help him grow there."
When the Penguins signed Rutta on the opening day of free agency, Ron Hextall spoke about adding "a little bit of the girth" with Rutta's 6-foot-2, 211-pound frame. They like what he brings defensively. His size and strength allows him to be strong on the puck and helps him win puck battles. He's more of a stay-at-home, reliable defenseman, which is why he might work well with someone like Smith, who is more of a risk-taker offensively and could stand to improve defensively.
"He's a good veteran guy, he's been really good to me since I got here," Smith told me of Rutta. "He makes me feel comfortable and is a bigger, stronger player who defends really hard. That should help me out."
There are still some growing pains as both players get used to not only each other, but also the Penguins' system. An example of that was in Monday's game (their second preseason game as a pairing) when both players left the netfront open and gave Dylan Larkin a wide-open shot at the goal:
"That's not just a new defense partner, it's the new system as well," Rutta told me. "I was used to playing zone and everything a little bit differently for four years. That's why we play those preseason games, and that's why we practice, so we can get better and on the same page. Obviously, there's a lot of areas to improve, but we still have some time and I'm looking forward to working on it."
Smith spoke of this adjustment period being a "feeling out process" between him and Rutta.
"We just have to read off each other," he said. "We're figuring it out. I probably could have helped him a little bit there too. He jumped in, I could have probably read that a little bit quicker. So it's kind of just a feeling out process, and the more more we play together, the more comfortable we get with those reads."
Neither player really had an answer when I asked how long it takes to feel comfortable when paired with a new partner. Smith said that he's "changed a bunch" over his two years in New Jersey, and that Rutta seems to be a player that's easier than others to get used to playing with.
"You get used to it as you go," Smith said. "But definitely the more you can play with each other, the more chemistry and the better you read off each other. It just depends, but he's a guy who has been around a while, so he's a little bit easier to adapt to, I think."
Rutta didn't change partners quite as often in Tampa. He spent most of last season paired with Victor Hedman. He thinks that the time period that it takes to adjust to a new defense partner differs from player to player, but he thinks that he and Smith are on the right track.
"Some guys never click, and some guys click really fast," Rutta said. "So I'm happy that we're getting better as a pair, that's really positive. That's always a work in progress, right? You want to always be better and better. But I'm happy I'm with Ty now. It's really fun to play with him, this young skilled defenseman. It's always fun to watch him. I'm just really happy to be on the ice with him."
MORE FROM CAMP
• Defenseman Taylor Fedun is healthy, cleared waivers at the 2 p.m. deadline, and was assigned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. That brings the roster to 26, a count that still includes Sam Poulin and Filip Lindberg.
• Both Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith are fine, with Jarry now practicing two days in a row since his illness on Monday. Lindberg served as a third goaltender and watched most of the drills from the sidelines.
• Teddy Blueger is the lone injured player remaining, and he's continuing to rehab from his upper-body injury. Sullivan said after practice that Blueger skated on his own in the morning with Ty Hennes, "progressing on the ice, not to the point where he's joined the team, that would be the next step."
• Jeff Carter practiced with full contact for the second day in a row.
• This was a long practice. A 45-minute practice is something that's pretty standard, give or take 15 minutes depending on the day. This practice today went over an hour and 15 minutes. Hennes led the players in skills drills to start. Then there were some 5-on-5 drills, some penalty kill-focused special-teams work, 3-on-3 scrimmage time, 4-on-4 scrimmage time, a shootout drill, and more five-on-five work. Then after formal practice ended and players were free to leave, hardly anyone actually left the ice. Just about everyone stayed on to get extra work in, breaking up into smaller groups spread out around the ice. Evgeni Malkin is usually one of the guys who comes right off the ice at the end of formal practice (not a knock on him, he knows what he needs after 16 years) but even he stayed out on the ice long after he could have left.
• The Penguins' lines and pairings remained unchanged:
Jake Guentzel - Sidney Crosby - Rickard Rakell
Jason Zucker - Evgeni Malkin - Bryan Rust
Danton Heinen - Jeff Carter - Kasperi Kapanen
Brock McGinn - Ryan Poehling/Sam Poulin - Josh Archibald
Brian Dumoulin - Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson - Jeff Petry
Ty Smith - Jan Rutta
P.O Joseph - Chad Ruhwedel/Mark Friedman
• The first penalty-killing unit was Rutta/Ruhwedel, Dumoulin, Ryan Poehling and Kasperi Kapanen, and the second unit had Friedman, Joseph, Josh Archibald, Poulin, Pettersson and Brock McGinn all rotating.
• The first power-play unit was the standard Letang, Sidney Crosby, Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust and Malkin. The second power play unit included Smith, Jason Zucker, Carter, Rickard Rakell and Danton Heinen.
• The Penguins were below .500 in overtime games last season with a record of 9-11. Sullivan said that's one of the reasons they worked on 3-on-3 as much (and as early) as they did today.
"We think it's an opportunity for us to grow and get better," Sullivan said. "I think our coaching staff has got to do a better job coaching it and we've got to prioritize it. As I said to the players this morning, 22% of the games in the league get decided in overtime or shootouts. So it's a significant amount of games. That's an opportunity for us. So that's one of the reasons why we've tried to make it a focal point here so early in the season, we'll continue to work on it and try to prioritize it throughout the course of the year."
• Malkin's custom "Geno" hats are soon going to be available for the public to purchase through the online retailer Goorin Bros:
