CRANBERRY, Pa. -- The pace of the Penguins' scrimmages throughout the first two days of camp have been pretty good. Not exactly game-like, but there's obvious effort there from everyone. It's obviously just a September scrimmage, and players celebrate appropriately when they score ... which is not at all, aside from the occasional raised arm or fist-bump of a teammate.
That is, until late in Thursday's scrimmage at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex. Evgeni Malkin came flying up the right side of the ice and took a shot that was blocked by Ryan Graves. Malkin quickly regained possession and sniped a shot past his countryman Sergei Murashov to tie the game up for his team. And in the quiet rink, you could hear Malkin's "YEAH!" clear as day.
Malkin, as he prepares for his 19th NHL season, was asked if that excitement is still there for him in training camp at this point in his career.
"If I said no, it'd be a lie a little bit for sure," Malkin said with a look of amusement on his face. "It was a long summer. I'm excited to be back and see everybody here."
Malkin, at 38, is the oldest player on the roster now, beating Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang by a year. The two years left on his contract could very well be the last two years of his NHL career. But he's as motivated as ever, driven in part by the Penguins' failures to make the playoffs in the previous two seasons.
"My personality, it's to win every game," Malkin said. "I mean, it's what I do all my life. The last two seasons, it's not fun when you lose and don't make the playoffs. It's not great for the city, it's not great for the fans, because we have amazing fans who support us so well. The whole leadership -- me, Sid, Tanger -- we want to win every game."
Malkin, with his usual sarcastic sense of humor, pointed out that the only two times he and Crosby have both played an 82-game season together was the last two years, and neither season resulted in playoffs. "Maybe I'll miss one game this year," Malkin quipped. "We don't want a long summer."
Malkin then joked that his expectation for himself this season is to "score two goals," alluding to being two goals shy of becoming the 48th player in NHL history to hit the 500-goal milestone. Then, getting a little more serious, he recognized that if the Penguins are to make the playoffs this season, he'll be one of the players who has to step up.
"My goal the whole time is to get a point every game, for the team to win every game," he said. "Try to be a leader a bit more -- I'm the oldest guy on this team. We have a couple of young Russian guys here (Murashov, Vasily Ponomarev), be a leader in the locker room. It'll be good for me to start doing better in the locker room -- help the guys, talk to the coaches. This is what I can do. And I'm pretty good on the ice, as well. I'm still hungry. I still want every game, and my goal is one or two points every game."
Crosby thinks Malkin can be that leader in the locker room. He doesn't think Malkin has to really change much to do that, either. Crosby just wants Malkin "to be himself." What he brings as personality or on the ice when he's at his best is enough.
"He's a guy who keeps things light," Crosby said of Malkin. "I think he understands when it's time to elevate. There's always certain games or certain times during the year we have to step up. And I think he's always been someone that understands that and can be counted on. I think that he leads in a lot of different ways. He just has to be himself".
Though Malkin himself acknowledged that he's the oldest player in the locker room now, he laughed that he's "not OK" with that fact. And he's looking forward to the possibility of some of the Penguins' young players making the roster to help him out.
"I'm happy to be here around young guys," Malkin said. "It's good competition for me, for sure. Every game, now in the scrimmages, I'm trying to do my best. The young guys are pretty good. They come to the league like 18 or 19 years old, and they play really good. But it's good for me. When you play around young guys, you will feel young too, you know?"
Mike Sullivan has watched Malkin for close to a decade now, and he thinks that Malkin's grown more comfortable as a person and as a hockey player over the years. He welcomes Malkin's personality and sense of humor coming out when it does. He thinks that Malkin and the star players have been leaders by being hardest workers in the first couple days of camp, and he believes Malkin in particular is capable of being a leader and key player for the Penguins over the course of the season.
"Geno's capable of elite play," Sullivan said. "When he plays the game within the concept of how we're trying to play as a group, I think not only is he more successful, but our team is also, and that's something that I think he has more of an understanding of now than he maybe did in his younger years. In a lot of ways, he's a wiser version of himself."
MORE FROM CAMP
• No changes to the statuses of injured players. Erik Karlsson is still day-to-day with his upper-body injury and not skating. Taylor Gauthier remains day-to-day with his lower-body injury, and Beau Jelsma is longer-term with the upper-body injury. Jagger Joshua (longer-term, upper-body) and Matt Nieto (month-to-month, MCL surgery) skated on their own before practice.
• Noel Acciari didn't skate with the regulars on Day 1, he and his wife were celebrating the birth of their third child, a son named Quinton Steel (yes, Steel for Pittsburgh). He was back with the main group today, which led to some shuffling of the lines and groups.
• Here are the lines and pairings from today, slightly different from Day 1 with the shuffling between groups:
Team 1 (black)
Anthony Beauvillier - Sidney Crosby - Bryan Rust
Rutger McGroarty - Sam Poulin - Drew O'Connor
Boko Imama - Joona Koppanen - Jesse Puljujarvi
Atley Calvert - Logan Pietila - Mathieu De St. Phalle
Marcus Pettersson - Sebastian Aho
Justin Lee - Finn Harding
John Ludvig - Filip Kral
Dan Renouf - Harrison Brunicke
Alex Nedeljkovic
Charlie Schenkel
Team 2 (gold)
Ville Koivunen - Evgeni Malkin - Rickard Rakell
Emil Bemstrom - Vasily Ponomarev - Valtteri Puustinen
Tanner Howe - Corey Andonovski - Jimmy Huntington/Marc Johnstone
Kris Letang - Matt Grzelcyk
Nikolai Knyzhov - Mac Hollowell
Philip Waugh - Nathan Clurman
Filip Larsson
Joel Blomqvist
Team 3 (gold)
Michael Bunting - Lars Eller - Cody Glass
Kevin Hayes - Noel Acciari - Blake Lizotte
Jonathan Gruden - Tristan Broz - Avery Hayes/Raivis Ansons
Ryan Graves - Jack St. Ivany
Ryan Shea - Scooter Brickey
Owen Pickering - Isaac Belliveau
Tristan Jarry
Sergei Murashov
• Teams 2 and 3 scrimmaged today, and Team 3 won 4-2. Kevin Hayes led the way with a hat trick, capping it off with an empty-net goal late. Hayes' linemate Blake Lizotte scored the other goal in the winning effort, burying a rebound off an Acciari shot. Malkin and Jimmy Huntington scored the two goals for their team. The goaltenders split the game for each team, and Tristan Jarry had a shutout in his half.
• Sullivan said that Acciari is being considered for a move to the wing, the position in which he finished last season.
• Sullivan has liked what he's seen from the two pro prospects received in the Jake Guentzel deal, Vasily Ponomarev and Ville Koivunen. Sullivan attended the first two games of the Prospects Challenge in Buffalo, N.Y. last week, where Ponomarev centered the top line and Koivunen played on the left wing of the second line.
"Ponomarev has had a really strong camp," Sullivan said. "He's got a great motor skates well, a good energy guy. I think he's hard to play against. I think he's shown some hockey sense, he's made some plays offensively. I think he's a conscientious player defensively. We really like what we've seen from his game so far. We really like his engine. He can skate, he can get in on pucks. He would help us in that puck pursuit game. I think he's a guy that's exciting for us to watch here moving forward."
Sullivan mentioned Koivunen's smarts first and foremost.
"When we went to Buffalo, when we watched (Koivunen) in the rookie camp, my first impression of him after the first game was this kid's a hockey player," Sullivan said. He just sees it, he thinks it. I. He has great poise with the puck. When you watch him with his peers, I think it's even more evident when he's playing with his peers. The talent gets a little steeper when he's out there playing against Crosby or players like that, it's a little bit more difficult. But when he's playing against his peers in Buffalo, he was one of the better players in the tournament in the games that I watched. I just think he's got a real high hockey IQ. He thinks the game really well. He has good offensive instincts. I think he will get stronger as he starts to grow into his own body and trains a little bit more, he'll get stronger, he'll get faster, and those physical challenges will evolve over time just through his maturation process. But as far as him as a hockey player, we couldn't be more excited what we've seen so far."
• Just before practice started the Penguins signed goaltender Luke Richardson to a professional tryout contract, which allows him to participate in camp and the preseason. He wasn't here today, but that's now eight goaltenders in camp, including the injured Gauthier.
Richardson, 25, was a backup goalie for the ECHL's Greenville Swamp Rabbits last season. He had a 2.19 goals-against average and a .931 save percentage in 12 games. He previously played four years in the OHL, then four seasons at Queen's University in Canada.
Hard to imagine Richardson sticks around beyond camp. If the Wilkes-Barre and Wheeling tandems are some combination of Joel Blomqvist, Filip Larsson, Murashov and Gauthier, that's all the spots. Even if Gauthier isn't ready to start the season (he is expected to be ready) then Wheeling also has its own ECHL-contracted goaltender signed in Jaxon Castor. Richardson is probably just an extra body for camp. They do have an undrafted free agent prospect in Charlie Schenkel here to give them six healthy goalies without Gauthier, but he's going back to the OHL at some point soon. Richardson seems to be the Schenkel replacement.
• Since Kyle Dubas took over, goaltenders in the system are required to have pads with a white base, for the challenge it presents on a shooter. Murashov's new pads came in -- they're almost entirely white, with a black stripe down the outer end and a golden triangle at the top. I ran into him after practice and asked him if his new pads have Olaf from 'Frozen' printed on the backside like his previous set. He said no, but he'd draw him on. Then he actually did it, taking a marker to the upper corner of one pad:
SERGEI MURASHOV / INSTAGRAM
The caption reads, "Not as beautiful as (his previous manufacturer), but he is with me. I tried."
• Every year the Penguins host the USHL Fall Classic, a series of games to kick off the USHL regular season. It's a big event for scouting, because of all the teams in one place. There are a ton of of NHL and college scouts here this week watching the USHL games, and the Penguins have a fair amount of their own people watching. That's a big plus to hosting this kind of event. Events like this are one reason the Penguins are looking to build a third sheet of ice at the complex.
• Friday is the last day of camp with a 9 a.m. start, rejoice. Here's the schedule:
9:00-9:45 a.m. – Team 3 practice (Rink 1)
9:00-9:45 a.m. – Team 1 practice (Rink 2)
10:00-10:45 a.m. – Team 3 vs. Team 1 scrimmage (Rink 1)
10:45-11:05 a.m. – Team 3 and 1 conditioning (Rink 1 and Rink 2)
11:30 AM – 12:15 p.m. – Team 2 practice (Rink 1)
12:40-1:30 p.m. – Team 2 practice and conditioning (Rink 1)
