PITTSBURGH (93.7 the Fan) – On the surface it would appear a tough start for the Pens return to full squad workouts as nine players were held back.
According to the team, those players “had exposure to an individual who had contact with a person that has tested positive for the COVID-19 virus”. The team decided to isolate the group “out of an abundance of caution in an effort to avoid exposure to anyone else within the organization”.
Instead of a negative, Pens head coach Mike Sullivan viewed it as the NHL system in place is working.
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“I’m real optimistic,” Sullivan said. “I think the league has done a terrific job at trying to roll out certain protocols with some of these potential circumstances in mind in order to mitigate the risk as best they can through a difficult circumstance.”
“I’m optimistic,” said captain Sidney Crosby. “It will be an important time the next few weeks. We are getting tested here every second day.”
“Everyone is on top of it and making sure we are social distancing. We are doing everything we can to avoid it.”
Crosby said the team is responding well after being limited to a month of small group workouts to try and limit exposure.
“It’s just an adjustment,” Crosby said. “I think you have to make the best of it. You’ve got to be able to adapt and adjust and make sure the safety is most important and everyone’s health.”
"That’s something we always have in the back of our mind,” Crosby continued about player’s health. “It’s just something we have to be able to be a little more aware of right now. That will take some getting used to. Other than that, this will become our new normal. We will learn to handle it and find our routines.”
They are trying to get back to a practice routine as they worked as a collective group for the first time in four months Monday in the UPMC Lemieux Facility in Cranberry.
“We were real pleased,” Sullivan said. “We thought we had great energy out there, a lot of enthusiasm. I thought the guys worked extremely hard. There were parts of the practice where they had to push through some of the fatigue. I thought it was a real productive first day.”
Sullivan said a lot of the small-group work in the last month got them in good practice, but there is another level to achieve.
“I do think there are aspects of the fitness that we have to address in order to get our guys game ready,” Sullivan said. “Most specifically it’s the belligerence, the combative drills, the tight area space, things of that nature. The pushing and shoving and leaning on guys, that’s a different type of conditioning. That’s really the only aspect of their conditioning that they haven’t been able to address because they’ve been trying to adhere to the guidelines the league has set out.”
Sullivan said they all know of the concerns and the potential of starting and then stopping a season. He wants his team to just focus on playing the game.
“We’re not going to spend all kinds of mental energy worrying about the what-ifs,” Sullivan said. “We are going to control what we can. We are going to trust the process and we are going to do the work every day and go about our business.”
“We are optimistic about the opportunity.”