Penguins are ready for their first game in 140 days

Pittsburgh Penguins forwards Brandon Tanev and Jared McCann had a disagreement Saturday.

During the team’s final scrimmage of its training camp, McCann bumped into goaltender Tristan Jarry. That prompted Tanev to shove McCann in response. A few seconds later, McCann’s gloves were on the ice and the players were grappling with each other at center ice.

Before any punches could be thrown, coach Mike Sullivan was hollering at them from the bench to stop while assistant coach Mark Recchi, serving as a referee, grabbed each player to serve as a peacekeeper.

A few minutes later, after the second period expired, Tanev grabbed McCann again, this time to give him a big hug from behind. Both players and their teammates were laughing as they headed to the dressing room.

“That’s just guys playing hockey,” Tanev said, while trying to stifle a smile, via video conference from Toronto on Monday. “Obviously, we’re great friends and we’re teammates. A little fun out there. Things got heated out there. But we hugged and made up as soon as the play was done. But that’s hockey. It’s such a fun sport. We’re extremely eager to get out there.

“We start tomorrow with our first exhibition game.”

The Penguins will face their most enduring rival, the Philadelphia Flyers, at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena in an exhibition game Tuesday, a few days before they open their postseason with a qualifying-round game against the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday.

Tuesday’s contest is worthless as it pertains to standings, playoff seeding or anything of tangible value.

But it could mean everything from the standpoint that they get to hit someone in a different jersey for the first time in 140 days.

Their last game was a 5-2 road win against the New Jersey Devils on March 10.

“You only get one really tune-up against another team before the playoffs, and then it’s all go,” forward Jake Guentzel said. “Both teams kind of will get that fire under themselves with this opportunity to play against another team. The last tune-up opportunity for us both. So I think it will be a really intense game.”

In contrast, their entire 2019 offseason — between their final game of the 2019 postseason and the first contest of the 2019 preseason — lasted 153 days.

“It’s going to be good to go out there and finally play a game,” Tanev said. “It’s been awhile. We played two (scrimmages) against ourselves in training camp. It’s not the same when you’re going out there and playing against an opponent, against a different team. That’s going to be needed for all of us. We really enjoy being back on the ice playing a game. That has some value to it. And obviously, it’s going to be a quick turnaround from that game to our series with Montreal. So you want to go out there and get back to the conditioning before all of this happened. Shake off the rust as fast you can and go out and enjoy it. Enjoy the playoff atmosphere.”

Beyond just enjoying the freedom of crunching someone in an orange jersey into the boards, the Penguins still see a need to buff out the rough spots they feel exist in their overall team game, even after two weeks of training camp.

“We’ve had intense intrasquad (scrimmages),” Sullivan said. “And I just think that’s an indication of the players’ acknowledgment that we have to get ourselves ready and we understand that we’ve got to do it in short order. So I think there’s going to be a level of intensity involved in all of the exhibition games with all the respective teams that are participating in the hub cities. I would anticipate our being no different.”

Note: Sidney Crosby was a full participant in Monday’s practice with no restrictions, Sullivan said. Crosby had missed most of the team’s practices and scrimmages over the previous week because of an undisclosed ailment. Sullivan’s indicated the team wouldn’t determine his availability for the exhibition game until Tuesday. … The Penguins will be designated as the road team for Tuesday’s game. … The game will be broadcast locally on AT&T SportsNet.

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