If Gennie Malkin isn't exactly the rallying cry type, and definitely didn't issue any such thing, at least not willingly.

Good morning to you.

Good Friday morning.

I'm Dale Kovach, which and D.K. Pittsburgh Sports.

This is Daily Shot of Penguins.

It comes your way bright and early every weekday.

If you're into football and or baseball, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Pirates that I hope you'll also check out Penguins versus Predators in Stockholm, Sweden.

Part one is today. that's a 208 p.m. Eastern time face-off,

and no less an authority than Dan Mews himself had spoken at the beginning of this Swedish trip

that for as much as they plan to enjoy

their surroundings, take in the Ricard Raquel tours, and all that other fun stuff,

his words, not mine, were going there to get the points.

Now, I don't mean to parse every syllable that these people speak on this subject,

but I have found it to be fascinating, in particular when I'm the one poking them about

playoffs this, playoffs that. Why? To me, that's kind of obvious when your team is in the standings, in the

NHL standings, where these penguins are, and yet you know that there's a parallel track in

place here to bring in younger players, to instill them, all kinds of positive characteristics, including collective

characteristics, but also prioritizing their development, you have to grasp that there are some

things that are at cross purposes here. And there are. So when I'm asking a lot of these same people,

including Muse, early on or even before the season started, about competing, contending, within reason, not being weird, the one thing that was strikingly obvious was that they would go into protection mode.

They would go into, let's make sure we don't raise anybody's expectations mode.

Kyle Dubas and my conversations with him were no different.

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