PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan)- Penguins winger Jason Zucker joined The Fan Morning Show Friday ahead of Game 1 against the Islanders on Sunday at noon.
It will be the Penguins' 15th straight postseason appearance and 6th under head coach Mike Sullivan. Sullivan, of course, already has two Stanley Cup championships with the team and Zucker explained why he has so much respect for him.
"I'm personally a big advocate of coach Sullivan. I think he does a fantastic job with the players and he's one of those coaches who's very candid, he's not afraid to speak his mind at any time to any player on the team. Any time I've talked to him he's been very respectful but very demanding.
Any time we've talked, it's been a good conversation about trying to make sure my game is where it needs to be and where the team's game is at and how I can help the team. So we just have to make sure that keeps going."
Zucker has spent most of his time on the Penguins second line, alongside Evgeni Malkin and Kasperi Kapanen when both have been healthy and in the lineup. He praised Kapanen for his work in his first year back in a Penguins uniform after being shipped off to Toronto in 2015 as an NHL prospect.
"Kappy's an unbelievable player with a ton of skill. It's something that's overlooked so often about how hard it is to adjust from a system he played so long in Toronto and jumping into this system playing with a world-class player like Malkin. There's a lot of factors to it that make it hard to transition at times.
I thought he did a great job, it's completely normal to have a few games to try to get used to it. But again, once he got rolling the line really picked up and started producing so I thought it was great work by him."
He also praised Jeff Carter for transitioning so well into the Penguins lineup, calling him a perfect fit for Mike Sullivan's system and saying he is "annoying" to play against.
As far as how the team needs to play against the Islanders to have success, he knows it's all about patience in the right ways.
"You've got to make sure that when we say 'staying patient', staying patient is not forcing plays through the middle offensively, through the neutral zone but you can still play with that speed. You can keep it simple by chipping pucks, getting it behind their defenseman in a simple way and then getting after them with the speed we have in our lineup.
That's where we can try to catch them and try to pressure them as much as possible. They have a great D core, they've got a great lineup through and through but we have to make sure we're pressuring them with our speed and our system. Yes, we want to keep it simple but we want to make sure it's simple with a lot of pace and a lot of pressure."
