When speaking with Pittsburgh Penguins' defenseman Ryan Shea last week, he discussed how some tweaks to the Penguins' system have allowed him to unlock the more offensive side of this game.
If Shea pinches, he has the assurance that a forward will be back to cover and prevent an odd-man rush. It allows him to play with more confidence. Play fearless. Take calculated risks.
But there's also a "why" that is contributing to that sense of fearlessness, and Shea scratched the surface of it when discussing defensive coach Mike Stothers and the rest of the new Penguins' coaching staff.
"The number one thing I've noticed is that [Stothers] is a very positive guy, and he puts a lot of trust in you," Shea said. "Like, me and Tanger... we didn't have a great start to that [L.A. Kings] game, and - last year - something else might have been different.
"But, this year, Stotsy, just... he trusts us to put us right back out there and kind of let us earn those back. And I think we ended up playing well the last two periods, and - obviously - we got the win from the game. So, it's the little things like that that just puts a lot of trust between the coaches and players, and I love that side of him."
"Trust" is a theme that keeps popping up when players discuss the relationship between them and the Penguins' new coaching staff. It pops up, too, when players discuss the connectedness in the on-ice product - but there seems to be a different kind of energy between the staff and the players that hasn't necessarily been as evident in years past.
Of course, that's not to say that trust didn't exist under the old regime. Coaches can't last a decade without it. But, with this staff, the mutual trust has bred positivity and confidence, which goes a long way in terms of the execution side of things during game action.
Penguins' Defenseman Aims To Keep Building On Early Progress
At the conclusion of the 2024-25 season, <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/pittsburgh-penguins">Pittsburgh Penguins</a>' GM and POHO Kyle Dubas emphasized that the left side of the Penguins' blue line needed to be addressed.
When guys are playing with that fearlessness, it's a contagious kind of energy that extends to the entire locker room - even to the long-tenured NHL veterans in it.
"It's going well," defenseman Erik Karlsson said. "I feel good out there and trust my instincts. It feels like the game we're playing now is heavily reliant on making good reads out there, and I think that it's been easier to do that with the way we've been playing so far to start the season."
Karlsson - who has played some of his best hockey with the Penguins up to this point in the young 2025-26 season - said that the trust between coaches and players is something that both sides are working through as the new staff becomes familiar with some of the old guard, and vice versa. Both sides understand that they need to meet somewhere in the middle, and it's paying off.
"Obviously, they're all new, too," Karlsson said. "They're coming into our group, and a lot of us [have been] here for a while now. And I think they've done a good job in asserting themselves into things that they want to instill into this group. And, at the same time, they've been very responsive to what we prefer and how we like to be handled.
"I think it's been a good feeling out period, where, now, is consistently more into just being accustomed to each other and being on the same page. Everybody kind of understands what the other person needs, whether that's the coaches or the players."
And if you ask head coach Dan Muse how trust has been bred, he agrees that communication and mutual understanding are required for player-coach relationships to work - and that trust, in general, has to exist.
"It has be there," Muse said. "We're all working together towards common goals. We all want to make sure that we're getting better every day. We want to make sure that we're continuing to grow. I believe in communication and us all working together, and I believe in us listening, too.
"These guys are the ones that are on the ice playing, so we do try to talk to them quite a bit. And we're doing it together. It's something I believe in. If they're saying it, then that's a good thing, but we've got to make sure that we're continuing to build that. All of us here."
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The Penguins, at 6-2-1, are off to a fast start in a season where outside expectations were not sky-high. There is a lot of season left, but the positive energy around the team, and the organization, is palpable. The players - young and old - are all part of it. They're playing well, and it's largely because they've been playing "connected," as Muse likes to say.
And playing "connected" is a whole lot easier when there is an element of trust. And that theme is something that Muse wants his team to continue to build on.
"It's so early. I don't think, for anybody, you're feeling like it's a finished product this time of the year," Muse said. "But, when I say, 'connected,' what I mean by that is putting ourselves in predictable points in all three zones based on different situations so that it's defensively, it's offensively, it's in our puck support... and I think there's been times, for sure, that it's there.
But, I think that it's an ongoing work in progress that we want to just continue to build out."
Penguins Earn Point In Late Comeback, Fall Short In Shootout
It was an evening heavy with emotion for the <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/pittsburgh-penguins">Pittsburgh Penguins</a> on Saturday night.
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