Penguins Room: Simple Q, ‘Are You Happy with Where the Team Is?’ (+)

In the boisterous Pittsburgh Penguins locker room at a practice facility on the outskirts of Montreal, we asked one simple question on Friday, the day after the Penguins spanked the Montreal Canadiens 9-2 at Bell Centre.

The Penguins have won six of their last eight games and rebounded from a brutal performance against the Colorado Avalanche last Tuesday by dialing in an increasingly enthusiastic game against Montreal, which featured six third-period goals.

Several players were asked the simple question without variation, “You’ve won six of eight and put up a big number last night. Are you happy with where the team is?”

Simple questions sometimes require the most complex answers.

Alex Nedeljkovic had the best reaction. In fairness, Nedeljkovic takes speaking to the media seriously. He often jokes around and informally chats with us scallywags about football or life in general, but when on the record, he understands that he’s speaking to the people who deliver information directly to fans, and he offers as much as he can, in as much detail as he is able.

So, Nedeljkovic started to answer three times, looked at me twice, and shook his head in deference to potentially deep answers before finding the right words.

Rickard Rakell pursed his lips and exhaled when we asked him, then gave an answer that extended for more than a minute.

We purposefully avoided the more media-savvy team members on Friday because we knew they would have invariably said something akin to, “You’re never happy, you’re always improving, it’s only December, we’ve got a long way to go …”

That’s what you were expecting to read, right? And that’s why we asked the most honest members of the room.