Let’s assume there are no unforeseen and unpleasant surprises between now and then — this is 2020 we are talking about, after all — and the Pittsburgh Penguins take the ice Saturday evening at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena to open up their postseason.
By the time Game 1 of their qualifying-round series against the Montreal Canadiens begins, it will have been 145 days since the Penguins last played a meaningful game. Two days after that — a 5-2 win at the New Jersey Devils — the NHL paused its season out of concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s been a long wait, and kind of a lot of anticipation that built up over those past few months not knowing what was going to happen,” Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said from a Toronto hotel during a video conference call with media Friday. “But we’re here. We’re excited. We worked hard to get to this point. It’s fun, and we are excited to play meaningful hockey.”
John Marino has been, in some ways, anticipating Saturday’s game even longer than his teammates. That’s because it will be the rookie defenseman’s NHL playoff debut.
Will he have the same jitters he had about 10 months ago when he appeared in his first NHL game during the regular season?
“I think it’s a similar circumstance, your first time playing playoffs to the first time playing in the NHL, so you kind of deal with it,” Marino said. “You know guys will have a lot more energy, but you can’t go out there and think of it as anything more than any other game. If you go out there and just play your game, the rest takes care of itself.”
