Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Happy 1st Day of Camp!

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

It feels like the first time, eh? Training camp is finally underway and Hunter has all your updates right here on this episode! He touches on Evgeni Malkin being out for 2 months and how the Penguins will have to overcome that. Who will step up? Does this make the Jared McCann trade look even worse? He also touches on how the team will be fully vaccinated by the start of the season and why that's the correct choice, plus goes into the training camp notes. Should Poulin be playing with the best players in camp? Is Heinen the correct choice to get the first crack with Guentzel and Carter? Who impressed during the scrimmages? Are the Penguins planning on having full attendance this season? All that, plus much more on this episode of Locked On Penguins.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!BetOnline AGThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your Locked-on Penguins. Your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network. Your team every day. Hey, everyone, welcome to this Thursday afternoon episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I'm your host, Hunter Hodes. You can follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. Follow the show's Twitter at L.O.

Understool Penguins. And happy first day of training camp to you all. It's been too long since we've actually had, meaningful things to cover with this team. So I appreciate all of you sticking with me through the offseason. If this is your first episode back since the season ended, well, welcome back. If you missed some of the episodes, I did have Brock McGinn on about, I want to say five weeks ago and a couple other guests as well during the off season. And just to add on to that next Wednesday, a very special guest will be joining the show.

Josh Ketchoff of the Penguins Radio Network. He is now a full-time play-by-play guy since Mike Lang retired. He will be on the show next Wednesday at 2.30. I finished scheduling with that with him yesterday. So look for that then, and I will be tweeting out something in the coming days if you have any questions to ask him. But I'm really excited to bring Josh on. He's someone that I've wanted to have come on this podcast for a long time. So I'm really, really excited to bring him on and just ask him all about the team and his career and everything in between.

So I'm really excited for that one. But, again, fall is in the air. that the temperatures are a lot cooler around Northern Virginia today. You can really see that hockey is coming. We are, what, 19, 20 days away now from the Penguins' regular season debut against the Tampa Bay Lightning. So I'm just, I'm so excited. First off, I'm going to give you all some updates from Ron Hextal's press conference today.

He started with the news of Eviggeny Malkin. For those that we're wanting positive news, you are not going to get positive news with this update. Evgeny Malkin will miss the first two months at least of. the regular season after he had surgery in June for partially tearing two ligaments in his knee. I believe it was the PCL and the MCL. So he will be out until December at the earliest. It was actually kind of funny because you saw all these people clamoring for Pittsburgh to do what Tampa Bay did with Kutra. It's like, oh my God, LTIR him until the playoffs, LTIR him.

But then, you know, these same people were now really mad that Gino is going to miss the first two months of the season. I don't really understand it at all. I think that's honestly better than what I and some others were expecting. I think some others were expecting him to be out for at least half of the season. And because as we all know, you know, the season is decided in October and November. I think they can survive without him until December, especially with Sid coming back after the first week of regular season. And hopefully the goaltending is able to be above average for that first week until Sid comes back. That's really all that matters.

Once Sid comes back, it should be a little bit more smooth sailing. and they usually still do play some of their best hockey when one of the big two is out. I mean, remember when Cindy Crosby was out just a couple of seasons ago for the first month, month and a half of the season. Evgeny Malkin went on a tear without him as the team's top center. And the team did as well as they, I think we're top three in the Metropolitan Division during that time. And then Sid came back and it was even better.

So that's probably what you're hoping for, the best case scenario here. Obviously, it's not the best news, but they should be able to survive without him, especially when Sid comes back for the first couple months of the season. Other updates from Hextall, there were no updates on contract negotiations for Chris Lattang, Brian Russ, and I'm getting Malkin. I would expect those to pick up sometime during the season. It is a bit weird that there's really been no updates from even any of the national guys on talks. I guess they're just kind of putting those off until some point in the season or maybe even after the season.

I don't know. I figured, to be honest, that they would have been started up by now. it's kind of weird that they have not. Here's the big one. So right now, 99% of the penguins are fully vaccinated. There's only one player that has not been, but Ron Hextall confirmed that he will be getting his second shot in the next few weeks, and he expects the team to be 100% fully vaccinated by the start of the season.

Round of applause for that. So very big that we're not having any sort of Tyler Bertuzi situation here. And I wish I was surprised that Tyler Bertuzzi would not be fully vaccinated, just because his uncle Todd has always had, you know, some very outlandish takes, that's for sure. I had a couple guesses in mind on who the Penguins' unvaccinated players. I'm not going to share them on the show. I just don't want to be an ass or anything like that. But still, it's really big that the entire organization will be fully vaccinated for this season,

and there's not going to be any sort of weird stupid situation. You saw with Edmonton yesterday Ken Holland confirmed that his team is 99% vaccinated, but there's one player that is not, and he will not be, even though Ken Holland has been pushing for him to do it. All signs point to that one being, I think, Josh Archibald, just give his Twitter account one big, long look, and you will see if that is probably the player that is not going to be vaccinated on the Oilers. But, you know, a lot of other teams have announced that they are, Carolina, I think Vancouver announced yesterday that they are, Ottawa announced yesterday that they are, you know, and I'm really happy to say that the Penguins will be fully vaccinated about the time the season starts. really big, especially with all the Canadian games, and just so that the players can enjoy

better circumstances on the road as well. So I wanted to share that news for you all, too. Going back to the Malkin thing a little bit, it definitely is a bit frustrating that they still decided to move Jared McCann before the expansion draft, even though they knew that Malkin was going to miss at least the first two months of the season. That is some weird roster maneuvering. I don't understand that for Ron Hexton. And even after they moved McCann, they didn't really do anything to replace him. They also probably figured that Sid was going to have the surgery at some point. They probably didn't expect him to miss the first month of the season,

or first month, excuse me, first week of the season. But they really just had no backup plan in place when they could have signed someone in a free agency or just, you know, made a trade for someone. So it definitely is some weird roster maneuvering decisions that Brian Burke and Ron I'll have, you know. I didn't understand the McCain move at the time. I've talked about this on my podcast. Numerous times that I would have protected him over someone such as maybe Teddy

Wugar or even Jeff Carter because they knew that Malkin was going to be out for at least the first couple months of the season. Why are you not prioritizing your center depth? That's what really doesn't make sense to me. They didn't really do anything to address it. Sure, they brought in Brian Boyle and I'm going to touch on him later in this episode, but it really doesn't make any sense now when you really think about just because he's out for two months.

and then you lost Jed McCann for nothing and now your center depth is really hurting going into this season. So that was the one big thing I didn't really understand. Some of the wine combinations at camp today are pretty good. Before I do get to that, though, the Penguins released a statement regarding their preseason games today. They're going to follow the guidelines set forth by the CDC. They recommend face coverings for everyone that enters the arena,

not just the unvaccinated, but everyone that is fully vaccinated as well. there are still no vaccination mandate or negative COVID test mandate for the penguins, I know there's a few teams out there that I think have released that to go to games. You have to be fully vaccinated or provide a negative COVID test within 72 hours. I know it's also been done in the NFL. College football has been doing with LSU. I do think the penguins should do that. 600 people that drop in their season tickets.

They will be replaced by 10,000 people who want to have season tickets for this year. That is how popular the Pittsburgh Penguins are, not just in the city of Pittsburgh, but around the United States as well. So I wanted to share my thoughts on that. Now going to some other comments made by Ron Hextel. He talked about Brian Boyle today a little bit to the media. He says he doesn't have to come in here and light it up. He's at the point where we think he's a role player.

We will see what he does the rest of Camp and assess from there. I mean, this guy is going to make the team. I said when they first signed into the PTO. I would be pretty stunned if he did not make it. I saw some videos of him at practice today. He looked pretty good moving around there for someone that did not play at all last season. So I still would be pretty stunned if he did not make the team. And just to finish this segment up, Hextall did confirm that there's been really no update on Cindy Crosby's progress.

He's basically still doing well. And he only has one arm with his stick. And he's still expected to be out a minimum of six weeks. So at least the first week of the season. That was all what Ron Hextall said today. In the next segment, I'm going to go over some thoughts. on the scrimmages from what I saw, some videos on Twitter, and just what I think of some of the line combinations that we saw as well. But before we get to that, we do have to talk about bedonline.ag.

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You can learn more at directTV.com compatible with device required content varies by package. All right, welcome back to this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I'm your host, Hon. Hon. Hodeys. I'm going to follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. Follow the show's Twitter at L.O.N.S.C. Penguins. So some interesting lines were formed in the first day training camp practice. I know, you know, I'm not always someone that, oh my God, this line might be a thing in the regular season,

but there is one that I definitely think has the chance to be that. And this was in team three. So team one and team two scrimmage. I'm going to get to that in a second with, you know, who scored and some of my thoughts on some of the videos I saw. But with team three, Zach Gaston-Rees, Hedie Bluger, and Brock McGinn were working together on the same line in this session. And I really do think that is going to be your fourth line when this team is fully healthy. Obviously, Aston Ruse and Bluger have a lot of experience playing together. They are a great duo. I'm not going to take that away from them.

But adding Brock McGinn to that mix, again, you're adding a much better offensively-minded player in McGinn over Tannett. And I really think that line could be better than the Aston-Ree's Blugher-Tan line, just because I think McGinn is more potent offensively. than TANF was. Obviously, I think TANF is a bit better defensively, though McGinn's numbers are not bad as well. But I think McGinn has more to offer in the offensive zone than TANF did. And I think that's going to pay off in a big way. And I really think you will see that line a lot during the regular season. Going back to Team 1 versus Team 2 in the scrimmage, I believe it was only for two periods. Tristan Jari did not let up any goals in that scrimmage. And yes, I understand some of the beat reporters are going to come out and say, oh, wow, does this, does this mean he's not going to let up any goals in the playoffs, stop. I really do not want to hear these jokes

for the next two weeks. It's so tiring. It's such a bad joke. Please stop doing it. But some of the notable forward combinations from the scrimmage, Gansel was with Jeff Carter and Danton Hinen. Again, for my bold prediction episode from the other day, I think Danton Hinen is going to surprise a lot of people this year. And I think he's going to score at a half a point for game pace, just like he did in Boston. I really think there's a lot more to this player than some people are talking about. And I just think, you know, his reputation is skewed a bit by how he played in Anaheim the last couple of seasons. So I really think a big year from Hinen is coming.

And it's nice to see him get the first crack on the top line in the first day of training camp. I don't know if that's going to stick moving forward, but it's still nice to see him get that first crack. Gensel and Carter together. That's going to be a lot of fun when Cey and Gino are out. Zooker is with Radim Zohorna and Kaspari Kappanininin. I think when Zohorna comes out of the lineup, if he does during the regular season, I think you probably will see that Zokker Malkin Kappan line be reunited whenever Gino comes back. I don't know if I agree with that a lot.

I think Sucker is probably better off playing with Sid than he is Gino, but, you know, Sullivan is probably going to give that Zokar Malkin Kappernan line as much as a chance as they can get. So we'll see what happens with that. Sam Poulin was on a line with Brian Rust and Brian Boyle. So that's an interesting one. That's probably not a line that's going to stick. I like that Poulin is playing with Rust. I do think Poulin should get a chance on the top line with Carter and Gensel.

Will he get that chance? I'm not sure, but I am always a believer of playing your top prospects with the best players in training camp to really see what they have in these scrimmages. You're not going to learn anything about them if you're just playing them with someone like Brian Boyle. And I think Boyle is a fine player. He's probably going to make the team. but, you know, he is what he is at this point.

It's a bottom six center. You're not going to learn a lot about Sam Poulin if you're playing with him. If you're playing him there in training camp. So hopefully Sullivan test the waters a little bit, puts them up there maybe with Zucker, capnin, or, you know, with Gensom Kartre and just, you know, feed him to the walls. The other line, Nathan Legerry with Dominic Simone and Evan Rodriguez. Again, I have the same take. You're not going to learn anything about Nathan Legerry,

who's arguably the top prospect in your sister by pairing in with Dominic Simone and Evan Rodriguez, who both of them at this point are bottom six players. So I've always had that take. I don't understand it. Hopefully Sullivan kind of gets out of that tradition and starts putting them up in the top six during some of these scrimmages. Now, in the scrimmage, it was the Genssel and Poulan line versus the Zulcher and Simone line. Kisperi Kaptain was able to score on Casey Smith on a penalty shot.

Apparently he roofed one right over his glove and actually put the water bottle out with him as well. So nice to see that Kisperi Kaptain is still kicking ass with a penalty shots. he's been like that his whole penguin's tenure, so I'm not surprised that that's going to keep going. I think it was Sam Poulan who scored the other goal, or that might have been during a just a practice session. Apparently he roofed one over to Smith as well, and Smith kind of gave him a good look of, hey, you know, nice shot kids. So nice to see Poulin playing well in camp. Two, Philip Hollander ended up exiting the first day of training camp with just something maintenance related. So we really are back when Mike Sullivan is saying, yes, it was a maintenance day for Philip Hollander.

and it's the first day of freaking training camp for cried out. So you really do know when you're back in hockey season. I would have liked to see him play in the scrimmage, so it sucks to see him exit out a bit too early. Players that I do want to see more of in training camp, I ended up tweeting this out earlier this morning. I really want to see more of Cam Lee. I've talked about this on my episode this week.

I know they're mostly set on defense, but see what the kid can do. Can you take a spot over you, Silicola. Can he take a spot over some of their other depth defensemen on the scene? Maybe over Mark Freeman potentially. I think he's going to get a chance to do that. Though Terry Pusen, again, I don't think he's getting talked about enough. Has a hell of a shot, a lot of skill, good playmaking ability, is a good skater. Let's see what he can do in camp and in the preseason games.

And then obviously, Philip Highlander, I think he's their best prospect. He says he's ready to take a spot. He's offensively gifted. Has a nice shot. It's good with zone entry. so I'm really curious to see what he can do in camp. Can he carve out a spot while competing with some of these other players while Sid and Gino are hurt? That's going to be the big question. Mike Sullivan also talked about which players he think could step up to fill the center ice void, and Zohorna was the one that he mentioned by name.

I'm also really curious to see what Pittsburgh has in this player. There's not a big sample size with him. I mean, he played, what, six, seven games last year, but he's a big body, skates well. has a nice shot, has some nice moves while going to the front of the net. This year, it's a two-way deal so he can be sent down to Wilkesbury, but in the next year of his contract, which is his last year, that is a one-way deal. So I think they're hoping they can develop him a bit more this year, maybe in Wilkesbury to start, then bring him up a little bit at times,

and then have him translate to the team full-time next year. But I'm really curious to see if he could potentially be a bottom-six-center while Sid and Gino are out. I know he took a lot of people by surprise when he took. came up and had some really nice games. But let's see if he can do that on a more consistent basis in training camp and in the preseason because I am rooting for that player. I think he's a better option than someone like Brian Boyle, just because he's a bit younger.

I mean, you know, maybe he's not as good defensively as Boyle has been throughout his career, but I think I would trust So Horna more offensively at this point than Boyle. So we'll have to see what happens with that. As always, Penguins Jesus is back with the Jeff Carter quotes because Carter spoke to the media today with these really fake but actually real quotes. They are incredible. I don't know how Penguin Jesus does this, you know. His tweet reads,

while Carter is addressing the media, welcome to the new era of Penguins hockey. We plan on crushing beers, scoring goals and winning some hardware this season. I'm in charge now. Then he threw the mic into the crowd, knocking out a reporter, and he also had a Photoshop image of a,

I think it was a bud light, rather than a microphone. So, again, hockey season is fully back when we got Penguins Jesus tweeting Jeff Carter, funny memes. I think Carter is a player that's probably going to regressive it this season. I don't think you're going to score it. Excuse me, I don't think you're going to see him score 13 goals in 20 games or have 16 points in his first 40 games.

But hey, you know, it can only go up from there, right? What if he scores 20 points in 20 games? Again, probably unlikely that that happens. But I do think that's the player that you see the most regression from, even though I want to see him kick as much. but as possible since he was just so good for this team last year. But that'll wrap up this segment of the show with some training camp updates. We still have a little more to get to coming up in the last segment. But before we do get to that, we do have to talk about rockado.com.

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That is rock auto.com. All right, welcome back to this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast. I'm your host, Honour Hodes. In order to follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes, you can follow the show's Twitter at L.O. underscore Penguins. I don't think there were too many other updates to come out of camp. Some more other Team 3 lines, I guess. Anthony Angela was with Felix Robert and... God, I hope I don't bunch of it.

this guy's name. I think it's Jen Drugs, I think, is who it is. I probably will. I probably just butcher that last name so bad, but you know, whatever. Drew O'Connor is on the third line. Michael Sheput is on the third line center with Valteri Proustin on his right wing. Team three defensive pairings. Marcus Pedersen is with Taylor Fadun.

P.O. Joseph is with Chris LaTang. Again, that's in training camp. We're not going to see that during the regular season. P.O. will probably be on the third pairing if he makes the team. We all saw how that went in the regular season when Krista Tang's underlying numbers, basically tank. I think his possession numbers were around 42 to 43%. The expected goals 4 percentage was around 45, 46% excuse me.

It was just too many minutes for someone who was playing in his first stint with the league. Obviously, the defensive injuries didn't help, but he couldn't be playing 25, 26 minutes a night when he's just coming up to the NHL for the first time. And then Josh Minascalo was on the third defensive pair. So that was the team, all of Team 3 lines from the first day of training camp. Remember everyone, you can go to Penguins training camp and get in for free. I believe it is full capacity. And speaking of that, the NHL actually sent out a memo today to all of the teams.

They expect to have all arenas except to be at full capacity this season. I think Vancouver is going to be at 50% capacity to start this season. Montreal is going to be at 33% capacity to start. and I'm sure they'll go up as the season goes on, and you know, as vaccination rates go up in those provinces in Canada. So the penguins expect to have full capacity at PGG PNus Arena. Again, face masks are recommended for everyone, not just people who are fully vaccinated.

I'm not sure if they are going to do a mask mandate. We'll have to see what happens with that. But as of right now, there is no mandate for vaccination status or a negative code test to get into games. And obviously, it is great news that we are starting to return to full capacity, especially in Pittsburgh where PBG has become one of the more louder arenas, I would say, in the playoffs over the last few years. It just, it was in the same when not a lot of things around in the building year. Even at 25%, you can hear them a little bit, but it's not the same when you have, what, 16, 17,000 fans screaming up atop of their lungs in the Stanley Cup playoffs,

or even when the stakes are high in the regular season, it really is not the same. And I know the players feel that way as well. But I think that was basically it for the training camp updates today. Again, if you missed it in the last segment, I think the player that's going to regress the most this season is Jeff Carter. His shooting percentage is going to come down. He's not going to score 16 points in his first 20 games. He's not going to have 13 goals and 20 games with Pittsburgh. I think he may finish the season with 15, 16 goals, but he's not going to score at the clip that he did when he came over from Los Angeles.

That's too much, I think, in my opinion. I saw some takes this morning saying that the Penguins are a bubble team right now. I don't know. I don't buy that for a second. And I think this is a bona fide playoff team. Now, how much damage they do in the playoffs? That we can debate. Can they win a round?

Can they win two rounds? Can they get to the Eastern Conference Final? Can they get to the San Lika Final? I'm not sure. I'm in the camp right now that when the team is fully healthy and if they can get average goal attending, they can go all the way to the conference final and they'll likely lose there, or Tampa Bay,

or whoever comes out of the Atlantic. I think they have the ability to take down whoever in the Metro, whether that is Carolina, whether that is the Islanders, whether that is the Capitals. And yes, I understand the Penguins of Lever of the Atlantic. lost to the Islanders two of the last three years, but this past year, they were the better team in basically every game in that series, and they were only eliminated due to goal-tending.

I think a lot of people are overrating the Metropolitan Division a lot this season. One of my buddies told me that, you know, the Rangers and the Flyers got better. I don't see that at all. I think the Rangers got worse this season. You know what they have in Artemian and Adam Fox and Zamanagedette, who's probably going to be way overpaid with that next contract, but they brought in Ryan Reeves for God's They signed Barclay Godreau to a six-year term. They move Pavel Bucenevitz for Sammy Blaze, who's just sandpaper at this point.

I think the Flyers just made a lot of really lateral moves. I don't really think they improved that much. Columbus is not going to be that good. New Jersey got better, but are they a playoff team? There's still a lot of holes, I think, in that lineup. You know who your top teams in that division are going to be. The Hunter's going to be really good. Carolina's going to be tough.

Washington's still going to be good, maybe a bit worse than they were last year. And you got Pittsburgh. I think those are your four playoffs teams. I don't think you're going to see five players. out teams come in this division. So I think the people that are saying that the penguins are barely a bubble team at most, I think are underestimating them a bit. So hopefully the penguins can use that to their advantage and shut some people up this season

and show that the demise of them has been greatly exaggerated. But that is where I have this team right now. I have them top three. In the Metro this season, I wouldn't be surprised if they got at least second. Maybe they'll win it, but I'm not sure. They just have to survive the first two months. I'm sure they will without Gino. And then when Malcon comes back, it should hopefully be smooth sailing until the Stanley Cup playoffs where the Penguins will look to extend their streak of being longest active playoff streak in the NHL.

But overall, those are my thoughts on the first day of training camp. I've talked about the players that I want to see more of in this camp. And, you know, that includes Poulin and Ligarion. Let's see if they can crack spots. Put them with the top guys. You're not going to learn anything if you put them with the bottom six guys. We will see if Mike Sullivan does that when the Penguins have their first preseason game coming up pretty soon. I believe their first preseason game is on Monday, September 27th, that PPG paints arena.

That will be against the Columbus Blue Jackets. This will be the first game against the Blue Jackets in almost two years now, which is just crazy to say since these teams play four to five times a year. So thank you all so much for listening to this episode. Again, Josh Gett-off will be a guest on next Wednesday's episode. Tomorrow's guest will be Doug Glacky of the Forward Checking TV. He does a great job there with some of his co-host, and he's one of my deuce. your friends from Penguin's Twitter. So look for that. We're going to have a lot of content

on Team USA as well and also what he is hoping for out of training camp too. So again, thank you all so much for listening. I'm so happy to be back talking about meaningful penguins topics now that training camp is here. And I can't wait to be doing that on a daily basis. And the season is only a few weeks away. So stick with me through the training camp. And we will be back with regular season hockey in no time. So remember, follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hoodies. Follow the show's Twitter. at LO underscore Penguins, and I will talk to you all on Friday.