Penguins dive back into busy game schedule on heels of rare idle day
Mike Matheson and Sam Lafferty were born 53 weeks apart in the mid-1990s, so their divide is not a generational one.
They are in different life stages, though, as Matheson is married with a pregnant wife.
That meant the Pittsburgh Penguins teammates had different approaches to a much-needed idle day Monday.
Lafferty “watched some movies, played some video games.”
Matheson worked on the nursery and went on a leisurely stroll with his wife.
“(Took) our dog for a walk outside,” Matheson said, “(felt) the fresh air.”
No matter how each of the two dozen or so Penguins players spent Monday, there was a common theme: no hockey, no ice.
“We’ve been playing a lot of hockey,” Matheson said, “and it was the first time in a while that we got a day off at home to be with our families and kind of reset a little bit.”
It couldn’t have been better timed, coach Mike Sullivan said, for the Penguins — a point echoed by Matheson. The Penguins finished a brutal stretch of five games in seven days with a 2-1 overtime loss to the New Jersey Devils on Sunday afternoon.
The sequence was necessitated in part by the NHL’s condensed and ever-evolving schedule amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Remember when the Penguins played once in a nine-day span early in February? Well, the past week was them paying the penance for that time off.
Power play work for the Penguins in Cranberry pic.twitter.com/otJ40djPhR
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According to Penguins historian Bob Grove, the Penguins hadn’t played five games in a seven-day span since Dec. 14-20, 2018. They are believed to have done the five-in-seven-days trick four times this century (March 2003, January 2004, March 2007 and December 2018).
“And they were rough games,” Matheson said of the past week during which the Penguins went 2-2-1. “In our division, there are not many games that feel like an easy one or you feel like you can take off … so each night you come out of there with ice packs and bumps and bruises.”
Coincidence or not, the Penguins — particularly at forward — have as many players out with injury as they’ve had all season. Monday’s team-wide “maintenance day” should help in that regard. It was only the third off-day for the players over a three-week span. The current two-day break between games — the Penguins host the Buffalo Sabres at 8 p.m. Wednesday — is the first for the team in more than a month (Feb. 21-22).
Another part of the equation is Sullivan’s approach to practice structure during this unique stretch of this unique season.
“We’re definitely adjusting,” Sullivan said. “I think it’s important that we think that through the workloads we’re giving the players. After playing an afternoon game (Sunday), they almost get a day and a half (off), but we also understand they’re in the midst of a lot of games in a short period of time and will continue to be as we move forward.”
The Penguins are scheduled to host four home games over six days starting Wednesday.
Tim Benz: Buffalo is even worse than New Jersey. Much worse, in fact. The Sabres have an NHL-low 16 points and are on an NHL-high 14-game losing streak. https://t.co/w7j3jWmluE
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“We tried to practice with intensity (Tuesday),” Sullivan said, “but we tried to lower the volume so we can continue to give them an opportunity to activate their central nervous system but also try to play under somewhat-game conditions. We tried to keep the volume low so that the workload wasn’t overly taxing to give time to recover before we go to a back-to-back here starting (Wednesday).”
By late Monday night, the Penguins are scheduled to have played 16 games in 28 days, one of (if not the) busiest stretches in franchise history.
The Penguins won seven of their first eight games this month but showed signs of fatigue and attrition in scoring only seven goals while losing three of their past four.
“As you go on in that busy of a stretch, you definitely start accumulating some bruises,” Matheson said, “so I think (Monday) was a good time for us to recoup a little bit and hopefully we get some of the guys who are out due to injury back soon and we can get back to that pace we were at a couple weeks ago.”
Chris Adamski is a TribLive reporter who has covered primarily the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2014 following two seasons on the Penn State football beat. A Western Pennsylvania native, he joined the Trib in 2012 after spending a decade covering Pittsburgh sports for other outlets. He can be reached at cadamski@triblive.com.
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