The Penguins get 'back to basics' with their power play

It wasn’t really a guarantee or a vow.

If anything, it was just a confirmation of the obvious.

When the Pittsburgh Penguins found out a pair of home games this week against the New Jersey Devils would be postponed because of covid-19 concerns with the Devils, they planned to take advantage of the downtime and work on their most glaring area of need (injuries notwithstanding).

The malfunctioning power play.

And boy, did they.

For the past two days in Cranberry, the Penguins didn’t just work on their power play. They tore it down to the foundation and rebuilt it.

A lot of that process involved the most basic component on the power play.

Shooting.

For the better part of two days, the Penguins’ more skilled players, a handful of whom own a couple of Art Ross Trophies, shot the puck under the watch of skill coach Ty Hennes.

“Obviously, in a season like this, there isn’t much practice time,” forward Bryan Rust said, in reference to the condensed 56-game schedule for the 2020-21 campaign. “So to be able to get out there and get some (repetitions) in when things haven’t been great, I think is key. It allows us to get a little bit confidence back, get a little bit of structure.”

During the early stages of Friday’s practice, Hennes had members of the top power-play squad firing pucks from every conceivable angle of the south end of the main rink in the team’s practice facility.

Goaltender Casey DeSmith was primarily on the receiving end of those shots. And he did have some help defensively. But it was a real couple of dummies in front of him.

Literally.

The Penguins used two tripod “dummies” with padding on all three legs to simulate shot-blocking defensemen in order to have their attacking players not just shoot the puck, but find shooting lanes as well.

“It kind of just simulates the (defensemen) in front of you as best we can in practice,” forward Jake Guentzel said. “A different technique, but I think it helps out big time in trying to get shots around (defensemen’s) legs.”

Having gone 0 for 19 on the power play over their last five games, the Penguins have been impeded by a number of defensemen’s legs (as well sticks, hands, stomachs and other body parts) recently. But they’ve also been hindered by another opponent.

Themselves.

That’s to say they’ve regressed in just shooting the puck with aplomb and instinctively have retreated into passing the puck, hoping for a prettier play that likely doesn’t exist.

“That’s just kind of the nature of the game sometimes,” Rust said. “Those things happen when you have such high skilled players on the ice. You always want to make those nice plays to make sure the puck can get in the net. A lot of times, when they don’t work out and you start gripping your stick and you try to make more and more plays. It might be a little bit of a snowball effect. Getting back to that simplistic identity of keeping it simple, getting pucks to the net and working hard — it doesn’t matter who’s out there — it gives you a chance at success.”

“It’s just a mindset, it’s a mindset of wanting to shoot,” defenseman Kris Letang said. “Not trying to find the perfect play out there or look for more than what’s given to you. The shot opens when you create movement, and you kind of create chaos around their zone and you get them out of their setup.”

The Penguins hope they’ve set themselves up for more success on the power play after two days of basic training.

“We know we have to be a lot better, and right now, we’re not getting the results,” Letang said. “We wanted to go back to basics. We wanted to get some good habits in. You do it by practicing it.”

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