One Game at a Time

The morning after Pittsburgh’s 5-2 loss to Philadelphia in Game 3, Dan Muse met with the media. Here’s what the Penguins Head Coach had to say on the scheduled off day ahead of practice on Friday before playing Game 4 on Saturday. The Penguins will be fighting to extend the series, as they are down 3-0 in their First Round matchup with the Flyers.

You know the history of teams in this situation. How do you keep your team’s spirits in the right place in the face of that?

We have to win a hockey game. So, we’ll have a practice tomorrow, get ready for that game. Then, we’ll go into that game, we need to win a game. And so, that's entirely where the focus is right now.

Last night, there was a lot of emotions in the room, but maybe anger was one of them, too. Is that maybe something you can rally around or carry into Game 4?

There's a balance, you know? We got to make sure that the focus is entirely on us and what we need to be doing here to win a game. In terms of emotions in a locker room after a game like that, you would expect to have that. But we also need to we need to find a way to do more. We need to find a way to go into this game and to win a game, and that's it. And so, there's emotional swings that I think are always going to be there. At some points, those emotions can become pretty extreme. But for right now, honestly, it's going to be a focus on having a great practice tomorrow, and our preparation is in place to prepare us to play that game here in a couple days.

Is it a good thing, maybe, to have a couple days here to reset. Or would you rather just get out there?

It's one of those where you can never control the schedule. And so, I don't know if I'm viewing this, is it good? Is it bad? I think you have to make it good. With whatever the schedule is and however it lies, you have to make it good for you and for your group. And so, that's what we're going to do.

You put Rickard Rakell back with Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust yesterday. That line played really well even without scoring a goal. Is there any reason why you haven't used the Evgeni Malkin-Tommy Novak-Egor Chinakhov line, at least to start a game in this series?

We made a switch there going in, I guess it was in Game 2, we kind of mixed some things up. Listen, all things are going to be on the table. We're going to look at different options. There's a big body of work that you have from the regular season to give you an idea on guys that have played together. Sometimes you revert back to that, sometimes you look at other things as well. I think right now, all things are going to be looked at and explored as we get ready for this next game.

Egor and Anthony Mantha were two of your more prominent offensive generators in the regular season. It has been quiet for them so far in the series in terms of putting pucks in the net. Just what have you made of their play so far?

I mean, obviously it was nice there with the power play getting going there yesterday. But in terms of the offense in general, it hasn't been at the level that it was during the regular season. And so, I'm not going to just pinpoint two guys on that. I think as a team, we’re looking to generate more. And listen, part of my job, and our staff's job, is to help these guys, when things are continuing to elevate, which they always will in the playoffs. Continuing to find the ability for them to be in good spots offensively, for the guys that have been relied on to score goals for us in the past. So, that's exactly what we're going to do, continue to work with these guys and try to have them be in the best position possible, individually and collectively, this upcoming game.

While you have made some changes to your line combinations, your defensive pairs have been pretty static throughout the series so far. I assume you've been satisfied overall with how all three pairs have played? Or is there anything you'd like to see there at all?

We have today as a staff to continue to go through and have conversations and make decisions in terms of everything we're looking at, just in preparation for practice tomorrow.

You've had 12 hours to reflect. You're up 1-0, obviously, what happened in the second period, it's hard to deny that that changed the course of the game and the momentum. Is there anything that your team handled during that stretch that you didn't like? Was there any distraction, lack of mental toughness, or were you okay with how they responded during that entire sequence?

I mean, I think you always go back and you'll say, I think you learn from past experiences. You should always go back, whether it's a game that you like or a game that you don't like. You want to go back and say, okay, could things be done better? At the end of the day, the result is what it is. And so, there's things throughout the game yesterday that I think we can all look back on and say, all right, these are areas that we could have potentially responded better. I mean, the guys, they kept playing, they kept looking to work through it. But could we have done some things better? Of course. The score is what it is.

Did you ask the league, or will you ask the league, to take another look at Travis Konecny kicking at Rust with the skate blade there?

I'm not going to go back. I said my piece yesterday in terms of some of those instances. And for me, I got to make sure that we're focusing on this next game. From game to game, there's always conversations, there's always things that are going to come up in any game, that we have the ability to speak with our supervisor on. So, that's not going to change. There's things that we will look at there from last night's game as well, just as we have in all the previous games.

You have a group that believed in itself, maybe when other people didn't believe in them, at the start the season. Does that help knowing that's in there for a situation like this?

The outside expectations have been what they’ve been since day one for us. And there’s expectations that this group has put on themselves. And so those expectations, I think our internal expectations, nothing's changing. I’ve said from the start of this, we just got to win a hockey game.