Like a lot of hockey people, Jim Rutherford enjoys a toasty beverage on a cold morning in a frigid rink.

But not coffee. And rarely tea.

“I never drink coffee,” Rutherford said. “My whole life, I never even tried it. … I did drink tea a little bit. I definitely don’t drink tea now. As a guy that’s had kidney stones a few times, that’s not recommended to be part of your diet. I wasn’t a big caffeine drinker.

“In the mornings, in the office, I would always drink hot water.”

But what about now, when the “office” is home? And it’s July going into August?

“No, not hot water in the summer,” Rutherford chuckled.

At the moment, Rutherford is working from home while the team he has assembled is in Toronto, preparing for an NHL postseason tournament unlike anything he has witnessed in his hall of fame career.

Having watched play be delayed for nearly five months because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Rutherford took a moment from the granular details of his job to observe how remarkable the NHL’s undertaking has been to get to this point of staging a postseason tournament in two cities with 24 teams in late summer.

“This is a big undertaking when you have 24 teams,” Rutherford said during a telephone interview with the Tribune-Review on Monday. “And 12 teams in two different cities. And, of course, the league set up guidelines that were very well done for the teams as far as opening the (practice facilities) for the players to work out on their own (throughout June and July). Then getting to the training camps where the coaches were involved. I have to give a lot of credit to the league.

“Just so many people had to go about their jobs in a different way. More stressful. But we were able to get the job done and get the Penguins in the bubble.”

The “bubble” is the quarantined zone the Penguins and 11 other Eastern Conference teams inhabit in downtown Toronto. Over the next month, those teams — and 12 Western Conference squads in a similar scenario in Edmonton — will compete for the Stanley Cup. But given there hasn’t been actual hockey — aside from a few scrimmages in training camps — for nearly five months, what will the quality of play be like in this environment?

“I don’t know,” Rutherford admitted. “I’m as curious as anybody else. It’s the same as individual players. You watch them in camp. They’ve prepared themselves the best they can, like every Penguins player has. But a lot of players aren’t used to playing this time of year. And they’re not used to being in this situation where they’re away from home all the time.

“It’s nice to be home. Our fans are a big factor in how we play at home. Our fans, they motivate our players. The guys, when they’re at home, after the game is over, they can go home with their family or out with their friends and talk about the game. Not going to have that now. It’s going to be a totally different dynamic. So it’s really hard to project as to how each individual is going to respond to this.”

A different dynamic for Rutherford will be how he watches the games. Given the NHL’s limits on how many individuals could travel with a team to its hub city, Rutherford opted to remain home in the Pittsburgh area.

He typically attends most of the Penguins’ games, home or road. And on game day, there are few members of the organization as intense or locked in as Rutherford. One of the most accessible general managers in the NHL, he regularly declines to speak with reporters on a game day, citing his former pregame routine as a goaltender.

What will gameday be like for him remotely?

“Well my tie won’t get as tight because I won’t have the tie on at home,” he quipped. “But, yeah, of course, this is very, very important for everybody. The stress level will be just the same. There are times during the year when I don’t go to all the road games. I stay at home. I like being with the team because I can observe first hand some of the little things that need to be done better. With the setup the way we have it now (for the tournament), my communication with (coach) Mike Sullivan between games, I can do my same role at home.

“At this point in time, it’s the coaches and the players that will get the job done.”

Rutherford touched on a handful of other subjects:

• His goaltenders have been the subject of heated debate, particularly after Matt Murray allowed seven goals while Tristan Jarry yielded none during a July 18 scrimmage. Rutherford was hesitant to put much weight into the disparity of those numbers.

“I’m fine with our goaltending,” Rutherford said. “Of course, some people want to view it a certain way where a goalie may give up more goals in a scrimmage. But I’m looking at what kind of goals they are, where they’re from on the ice, who’s scoring them, whose line’s out there. That first scrimmage, our top two lines, they really had it going. But we have two good goalies that Mike Sullivan is going to have the option of going with either one. And I would suspect that if we can go on a long run here, that both goalies will be a part of it.”

Unlike in the previous two postseasons where sturdy journeyman Casey DeSmith was the backup, Jarry figures to pose a better option as a potential starter considering he was an All-Star in January.

“Tristan had a very good regular season,” Rutherford said. “He’s carried that over to this camp that we’ve just been through. No disrespect to DeSmith. He played very well for us the year before, and he’s a good goalie, too. In a sense, we have three good goalies. But ,certainly, Tristan, with his numbers this year, is going to make it difficult on the coach to make the decision as to what goalie he goes with at different times.”

• Even with forwards Nick Bjugstad (back) and Dominik Simon (shoulder) sidelined several months because of surgeries, Rutherford is confident in his team’s depth beyond the 20 players they figure to dress most games. Reserve forwards Sam Lafferty and Evan Rodrigues reinforced that comfort with strong performances in training camp.

“We’re fortunate to have depth,” Rutherford said. “You have to if you want to have a chance to go on a long run in the playoffs. When you start out with two guys that could play in your top nine forwards (Bjugstad and Simon), usually your depth is starting to dwindle. But we’re fortunate. We still have very good depth there with guys that can go into the lineup and make an impact and not miss a beat with our team.”

• In April, Rutherford stated he had not opened talks with agents for pending restricted free agents such as Murray, Jarry, forward Jared McCann or others because of the uncertainty, at that time, of the NHL’s salary cap. Earlier this month, the NHL and NHLPA agreed on a memorandum of understanding that will keep the salary cap for the 2020-21 season at the current number of $81.5 million.

Despite that, Rutherford has not yet opened talks regarding potential contract extensions.

“I don’t know if I’ll leave it right until the playoffs are over,” Rutherford said. “We’ll get into the playoffs here and see how things are going and maybe start some conversations with a few people. But I have not started any timetable as to when we’ll start those conversations.”

• The expansion draft in the 2021 offseason for the Seattle Kraken looms, but it doesn’t sound like an immediate concern for Rutherford.

“It does impact things,” Rutherford said. “That’s just another thing that we have to be prepared for. We’ve already had discussions on what we’re doing. We don’t know exactly who will be protected because we have to go through a season and see where we’re at. But we have to make sure we have the players available for the expansion team.”

• Typically, the postseason is a pretty slow time of the calendar for general managers as far as their day-to-day duties go. But given the 2020 offseason will last approximately a month and a half between the Stanley Cup Final — ending potentially as late as Oct. 4 — and the targeted opening of training camps Nov. 17, Rutherford figures to be immersed in many of his offseason tasks while the postseason is going on.

“Yeah, we’re working on it now,” he said. “I’ve been working with the hockey (operations) staff. We have to do a projected budget, projected player salaries, what we’re going to do with different contracts, how we’re going to approach the coming offseason. We’ve got the draft and we have decisions to make there. There’s a lot of things to work on at this point in time with the new (collective bargaining agreement) and everything that we’re dealing with the (salary) cap being flat now. That’s wasn’t something that we were expecting. So we have to make more decisions based on that. So there will be a lot of work going on between now and October.”

• Given all NHL teams have taken a financial hit from a lack of ticket revenue, budgets for things such as scouting or travel figure to take a hit, to say nothing of the countless number of staffers around the league who have been furloughed or laid off.

Rutherford indicated the Penguins’ budget for operations beyond players’ salaries is still being worked out.

“That’s impacted always when you’re dealing with a budget. When you’re talking about scouting, we have a draft coming in October, so nothing’s affected there right now. But, certainly, with the unknown coming next year, we’re all going to have to do a better job budget-wise with the unknown of what our revenue is going to be next year and how many fans we’re going to have in the building and all that. That all goes hand in hand every year.

“But, certainly, this is a tougher year to project where our revenue level is going to be. And, of course, when you don’t know that, you have to be careful with your expenses.”

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