Penguins Looking For Continued Success

SPECIAL NOTE: The games this weekend are not at normal times for local Pens fans! St. John's is an hour and a half different than Eastern Standard Time (EST) where Wilkes-Barre is. Saturday's game is scheduled for 6 p.m. EST and Sunday's game starts at 2:30 p.m. EST.  

I got a chance to speak with some of the guys earlier this week before the Penguins boarded a plane for Canada, so I figured I would break up the monotony of days off between games with a little insight on the players' thoughts heading into this weekend's games with the St. John's IceCaps. I chose two players who have been at this stage before in their careers.



Sounds From The Locker Room

Trevor Smith on the sense of urgency to clinch a playoff spot this weekend, the secondary scoring touch and the timing of the current streak:

"To clinch a playoff spot would be great, but we are just going to try and win as many games as we can heading into the playoffs."

"Come playoff time that's really important. When you look at any championship team, they're getting scoring from their 2nd, 3rd and 4th lines. Coaches are putting their top defensive players against top lines, so it's a lot harder to generate opportunities five-on-five.

"I think we've prepared well for this. We went through some ups and downs at the start of the season, but right now this is the time we want to be playing our best hockey and I think we are."

Warren Peters on the team playing their best hockey at this time, the win streak, how the players handle the time off between games and the Pens' magic number:

"From past experience, it's not always the best teams that go the furthest in the playoffs its usually the hottest teams, the teams on a roll."

"There's not a lot of focus on that, it's just everyday we're doing what we need to do to make sure we feel prepared and physically ready to play come Saturday. Whatever sets us up to do that the best is what we're focusing on. 

"I think that it's a juggling act a bit too. You have to get what you need, identify what that is, make sure you are staying on top of conditioning and all those things as well because in two weeks you can let a lot go. I think maintaining right now is where we are at. We have gotten to a pretty good level and now it's about getting back to that level for the weekend."

"That hasn't been mentioned in our room. I can think of maybe once where we heard of the magic number. It's probably redundant, but it's just about going out and playing good hockey on Saturday and Sunday."