Penguins resume practicing ... with a new normal

None of this is normal.

Just look at the calendar. It’s July.

The Penguins should not be practicing. They should be doing single-leg box hops in a home gym during the morning then catching rainbow trout off a pontoon boat in an Ontario lake with a five-syllable name by the afternoon.

But “normal” evacuated just about every walk of life a long time ago.

Four months to be exact, if you’re an NHLer.

The Penguins were reminded of that Monday during the first practice of their training camp in Cranberry.

Roughly 10 minutes before the session opened, the team announced nine players would be held out indefinitely after it was learned they had potential exposure to an individual who had contact with a person who tested positive for the coronavirus.

Per a new NHL policy, the identities of those players were not revealed. In all, 11 players did not participate in the practice, including three reserve goaltenders.

Most notable of the absences was forward Patric Hornqvist. Also missing were reserve forwards Anthony Angello, Adam Johnson, Sam Miletic, Sam Poulin, Phil Varone, defensemen Pierre-Olivier Joseph, Juuso Riikola, goaltenders Casey DeSmith, Alex D’Orio and Emil Larmi.

In a statement, the team said the players were sequesterd “out of an abundance of caution in an effort to avoid exposure to anyone else within the organization.”

“The decision that was made to quarantine the players out of caution is just going to be part of this process,” coach Mike Sullivan said during a video chat with reporters following Monday’s practice. “We’ve talked about a lot of it as a staff and the potential scenarios that could arise and how we would handle them and how we would react to them. It’s one of those things that we’ve got to be ready to adjust and adapt. That’s what we did out there today.”

Beyond that, practice was … normal.

That’s to say it had a furious pace and it was intricately detailed. If you didn’t know any better, this could have been a random Tuesday between home games in December.

“It’s great to get back,” forward Sidney Crosby said. “We’re all going to take a few days to get used to this, this kind of new reality for us as far as testing and all the social distancing and everything like that that will happen here at the rink. It’s something that we’ll have to adjust to a bit, but I think once we get used to that, it will just kind of become our new normal.”

“We thought we had great energy out there, a lot of enthusiasm,” Sullivan said. “Guys worked extremely hard. There were parts of the practice where they had to push through some of the fatigue. They did a real good job.”

Despite the ample regulations the NHL has put in place to minimize the risk of players contracting the coronavirus, the simple act of practicing for the first time since the NHL halted play March 12 and going about the business of being a professional hockey player was greeted warmly by the Penguins.

“It was great,” forward Jason Zucker said. “It feels good to be out there. The first one is always a little bit hard, a little bit tough. But once you get back into it, I thought it was great. It felt really good to be out there with the guys and in a team-like setting.”

With only two weeks of camp before the team is scheduled to fly to Toronto to be part of the Eastern Conference’s portion of the postseason tournament to conclude the 2019-20 season, the Penguins realize the urgency of maximizing this limited window of practice.

“Watching the way the team practiced today with energy level and the level of enthusiasm that we had out there is just affirmation that we’ve got a group that is excited,” Sullivan said. “Now, it’s about making sure that we control what we can each and every day to give ourselves the best opportunity to take advantage of this.”

If all goes as designed, the Penguins will open the postseason in a qualifying round game against the Montreal Canadiens in a mostly vacant Scotiabank Arena in downtown Toronto on Aug. 1.

Despite missing several of their own players and seeing other teams quarantine players throughout the league, the Penguins profess optimism the NHL’s plans will be realized.

“It will be an important time here at the next few weeks to make sure we’re doing our best to stay out of trouble,” Crosby said. “We’re getting tested here every second day. Everyone is on top of it and making sure we’re social distancing and all that stuff. We’re doing everything we can to avoid it. Hopefully, that’s able to be a success and we can get to the (tournament) healthy.”

In a lot of ways, that hope is normal for this group.

“Our guys, I think, have it in perspective,” Sullivan said. “They understand it. They get it. This is a real hard trophy to win. But we’re real excited about the opportunity.”

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