CHICAGO — Last season, the Penguins had a relatively unusual goalie situation, with two players on the roster who had won Stanley Cups with the franchise.
This year, on paper, is a bit more conventional. Matt Murray, he of two Stanley Cup titles and betting favorite to win the Vezina Trophy, is the starter and Antti Niemi, signed this offseason to a one-year contract, is the backup.
But Mike Sullivan isn’t looking at his decision any differently.
“Just like last year, we feel like we have two solid, bona fide No. 1 goaltenders,” Sullivan said before the Penguins’ game against the Blackhawks Thursday. “I think we’re fortunate to have the depth at the position that we have. We’re going to try to utilize both of them to try to put them both in a position to be successful.”
Niemi, making his Penguins debut Thursday night against the Blackhawks, has the pedigree to potentially prove Sullivan right. He’s coming off a shaky year in Dallas, but won a Stanley Cup with Chicago in 2010.
Sullivan he and the coaching staff are generally trying to take a long-term view when assessing their roster heading into the season.
“A lot of our guys have an established body of work with us, we’re very very familiar with what their capabilities are and how they can help this team win,” Sullivan said. “For me, at this particular time of year, it’s just about making sure that we focus on the details and we control what we can to get better every day.”
Niemi will get some opportunities early to prove himself, too. Even if Niemi only plays in the second legs of back-to-backs, that would mean four starts in the month of October alone.
“We’ve got a fairly decent workload coming out of the gates here early in this season, so both of them are going to see some work,” Sullivan said. “I think it’s important for us to make sure that we don’t overtax any one of them to the point that we get diminishing returns.”
Difference in styles
While Patric Hornqvist recovers from offseason wrist surgery, Jake Guentzel has assumed his role as the net-front man on the Penguins’ first power-play unit.
The two are listed as roughly the same size, but their styles of play are not.
“He’s different than Horny in the sense that he’s not necessarily a bull in a china closet there, making life miserable for our opponent’s goaltender,” Sullivan said. “I think he’s more of a cerebral player. I think he’s got really good stick skills, he finds those little soft areas that I think, our other players that are on the ice with him, they can find him.”
Both players, though, are effective at doing what the Penguins require of their net-front power play man, essentially cleaning up on deflections and rebounds off shots from the other four players on the ice.
Sullivan said he wants to emphasize more of a “shooting mentality” for the Penguins’ power play, which was held without a shot on goal on its first two attempts in the season opener against St. Louis Wednesday, before finally scoring in the third period.
“I thought we got better at it as the game went on last night, but early in the game, our first couple of power plays, I thought we were reluctant to shoot the puck,” he said. “I think, instinctively, we have guys that want to make plays, and so we’re not necessarily a shot-first group of players, just from a natural instincts standpoint. We’ve got to try to heighten their awareness to look to put pucks on the net.”
Eating up minutes
Kris Letang led all players with 26:05 of ice time in the season opener Wednesday. That might seem like a lot for a player in his first game in seven months, coming back from neck surgery.
But when that number was raised to Sullivan, he just shrugged.
“That's normally what he plays, isn’t it?” Sullivan said. “We’re going to throw him right in the fire.
“There aren’t too many guys that can log those kinds of minutes night in and night out throughout the course of the league and he’s one of them that can do it.”
Sam Werner: swerner@post-gazette.com and Twitter @SWernerPG
First Published: October 6, 2017, 1:14 a.m.