Friday, September 18, 2009

Greetings from training camp


We headed down to Pens training camp last Sunday and took a ton of pictures, some of which were not worth looking at unfortunately. Below are a few of them with a story or two while we're at it. Enjoy.


Consol Energy Center from the Mellon Arena side.


Jordan Staal walking in just before the start looking a tad sleepy.



GENO!


Eric Goddard


Tyler Kennedy with Dan Bylsma practicing a little shooting.


Marc-Andre Fleury



Jordan Staal on the "faceoff."


Doing a little planning on the white board.


Brooks Orpik


Sergei Gonchar


Fleury and Dupuis having a strategy session.


Brooks Orpik


An end of session puckfest on Fleury.



Billy Guerin and Chris Kunitz chatting it up.


Sidney Crosby!


Sid is even intense in practice.


Fleury


John Curry


Sid


After session stretching.


After practice shots of the guys leaving.

Sergei Gonchar


Could it be Sidney Crosby?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! *screaming*



Nope. But everyone sure thought it was, yelling his name and demanding autographs. He finally had to say "I'm not Sid." We have to give it to them, it does look like Sid from that point of view, but Sid has bigger calves! C'mon people!


Billy Guerin showing the cooking staff his goodies. Someone asked him what it was and he responded "booze!" Laughing ensued and he proceeded to say that it was "the special kind" and that "he wouldn't drink it." He threw it in his car and then went to sign autographs. When he came back to his car he told everyone to take it easy and waved. Very likable guy with a great personality. He was taking the guys you'll see below over to the Marriott near Mellon Arena.


Alex Goligoski


Gogo and Billy's friends whose names we can't tell you. Sorry!


The real Sidney Crosby. He dropped off his "booze" and proceeded to go over to a group of people waiting for autographs just down from his Range Rover. The people were polite when asking for autographs from the lesser known guys but once Sid started walking over there it was total chaos. People didn't care about barriers or anything for that matter and basically mobbed him. He was being surrounded and quite frankly we have no idea how he deals with it. The picture below shows the crowd, just before he became completely engulfed.




Sid's Range Rover and Fleury's Lamborghini


Marc-Andre Fleury


Fans above were asking him questions to which he said he didn't know. He then was telling the guy beside him to help Sidney because he was going to get mobbed. They weren't fast enough. A woman who came out took charge and told the mob he was leaving and basically dragged him out of there and forced him into his RR. Kind of amusing really. (See below)


Fleury hiding from the mob.


Chris Kunitz




That's it! It was a good day and an enjoyable experience. We mentioned it before but Chris Conner stood out to us the most. He has good speed and was scoring left and right. Eric Tangradi looked good as well. Dan Bylsma also has this child-like love of the game that really shows. He was out skating laps and shooting pucks with the rest of the guys and enjoying every second of it. Kids along the glass were taking pictures and he would skate by and make faces at their cameras. Just an all around good guy. We can't wait for the season to start.


The Pens had their annual Black and Gold game with the Black team winning 3-2. Alex Goligoski had a hat trick to win the game for the Black team. Details here.

The Pens play the Maple Leafs Friday in their last home preseason game.

The Pens will receive their Stanley Cup rings on September 29th.

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