I once was joking around with T.J. Watt of the Steelers asking if he could pay in advance his rest period,

meaning, you know, get all kinds of extra sleep before the team was about to hit some really rough patch.

And he said, oh, yeah, sure you can.

When I asked him to explain how he just went blank, good morning to you.

Good.

Wednesday morning, I'm Dan Kovachvich of 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 in the same place that you found this. Your favorite hockey team was back on the ice. Yesterday in Cranberry, first time in a couple of weeks. Still nine days out from their first game back. That'll be next Thursday against the Devils at home. Chris LaTang was a full participant. That was good to see after his foot injury. Philip Hollander was a full participant. That was great to see after the blood clot that's had him out for three months and

obviously a much more significant scare to something like that.

But overall, as one might expect, given that the penguins are 13, 4, and 4 over their last 21 games.

That, of course, representing the period exactly between the Christmas break and the Olympic break.

You really don't want to be changing too much.

Dan Mews didn't.

The lines that he rolled out, except for the

holes that were being filled and obvious holes at that for the four players who are still over

in Italy, the lines were as follows. Hollander, Kevin Hayes and Brian Rust were the top line. Again, don't overthink this.

Tommy Novak was between Yeager Chinikov and Yvgeny Malkin on the second.

Ben Kindle between Anthony Mantha and Justin Brezzo, Blake Lazotte, of course, between Connor

and Noel O'Hari. On the back end, it was Brett

Kulak and Chris LaTang, and then it was Parker Watherspoon and Ryan Shea, Elia Saloviov and

Connor Clifton, and Ryan Graves was the odd defenseman out in their drills.

It's a weird scenario having this much of a break followed by an unreal amount of activity,

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