Players all have their different pregame routines, but one game day routine that a lot of Penguins players share is a game of sewerball.
The rules of sewerball are simple. Players stand in a circle and kick a soccer ball back and forth, trying to keep it from touching the ground. There are different variations -- the game can be played two-touch, where (as the name suggests) players must touch the ball two times to try to send it to another player, it can be played as one-touch, or it can be played where players can have either one or two touches to get rid of the ball.
"It's a soccer game to get your hand-eye going and your feet moving," Jared McCann told me. "You try to give a guy a bad ball. You try to make him handle it, make sure he's focused, and make sure he's using his feet to control it. We're not soccer players in here, so sometimes it's pretty funny to try to watch the guys battle. It's all in fun."
"It's essentially just trying to keep the ball up in the air as long as you can," Bryan Rust said.
"If you screw up and have a bad touch and the ball goes on the ground, you're out,' Marcus Pettersson added. "We play with two lives, so you get two outs like that."
This video shared by the Penguins during the 2017 playoffs shows a group of players playing the version where they can have either one or two touches:
A little pre-game soccer for the boys. 🐧⚽️ pic.twitter.com/ruxo9WafKl
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) June 3, 2017
The player who gets eliminated isn't necessarily the last to touch the ball. If a player sends a ball in the direction of a teammate, and it is judged that the teammate didn't try hard enough to get to the ball, then the second player is eliminated, not the first.
"If the ball hits the ground and it's your fault, whether you hit it too far for somebody and it hits you and hits the ground, then you're out of the game," Rust said. "It's definitely a game of honor and there are some questionable calls, but everyone is good about it."
"Say I put a bad ball to Jared," Pettersson explained. "If he doesn't work for it and doesn't get there, we argue that he could have worked for that. It gets heated."
"If there's a disagreement you do a rock-paper-scissors," John Marino added.
There are definitely often disagreements. Penguins players play in a little open area around the corner from the entrance to the locker room, just past where Mike Sullivan speaks on game days. While reporters are waiting for Sullivan to talk, we can usually hear a player or two pleading his case on a call.
The Penguins typically play twice on game days. A small group -- usually Pettersson, Jake Guentzel, Rust, Tanev, and McCann -- play around 5 p.m., then a larger group -- which usually includes players like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Patric Hornqvist (when healthy) plays after the team's 5:30 meeting. Not everyone on the team joins in, though. Dominik Kahun, for instance, told me he sits those games out after he hurt himself playing a few years ago.
After learning the basics, I took a page out of Mike Babcock's playbook and asked some of the regular participants to rank some of their best and worst teammates in terms of sewerball skill.
When it comes to who is the best, there was a pretty common answer: The Europeans.
"Dominik Simon is really good at it," Marino said. "Honestly, any of the European guys are really good. Soccer is pretty much their second sport."
"I'd say the best player is (Patric) Hornqvist," Rust said. "He's usually out there. The European guys are really good."
"When we play just before the meeting, I'd say other than me, I think Jake is pretty good," Pettersson said. "When everybody plays before the game I think it's probably Horny. Dominik Simon is pretty good, too."
"Rusty is very good at it," said McCann. "Horny is unreal."
"I'd probably say Rusty and myself are pretty good," Brandon Tanev said. "Jared's passive, he just likes to play."
When I asked who isn't that great at sewerball, Rust didn't want to give out any names.
"I'm going to leave that for someone else to say," he laughed. "I don't want to throw anybody under the bus."
Other players didn't hold back.
"I'd say Pettersson is the worst," Tanev said after some thought.
"Oh, this is going to be controversial," Pettersson laughed. "I think (Nick) Bjugstad is not very good. Johnny Marino is so-so. He's meh."
"The worst player, by far, is John Marino," McCann revealed. "Bjugy is pretty bad too, but Marino takes the cake."
"Oh, I'm not that good," Marino said without hesitation when I asked him who was the worst. Then McCann, seeing me talking with Marino from across the room, yelled, "I told her the truth!"
"No, I agreed!" Marino laughed. "That's fair. I compete though."
One player gets a little more into the game than others. After a recent hockey game, Sullivan said Tanev "only plays the game at one speed: Mach-10." That rings true for the pregame sewerball, too. I don't think he's capable of giving anything other than 110 percent.
"Tanev gets pretty intense with it," Marino laughed. "That's pretty much with everything he does."
"Tanev, he's 'Turbo'," McCann said with a laugh. "He just screams and yells, it's awesome. He likes to get the boys going."
"He's the most controversial player," Pettersson said of Tanev. "He argues a lot of missed calls."
It's a game for fun, but it's also a good way for guys to get warmed up before the start of the game.
"It's one of those things that's just nice to do before a game," Pettersson said. "It gets you loose and puts a smile on your face, and gets you in a competitive mindset."
"We're hockey players, right?" McCann said. "So we're competitive in everything. Sometimes it's funny to see the boys get fired up about it for no reason. I mean, it doesn't mean anything. But that shows how competitive we are. We want to win all the time."
"We play with the same guys before every game, so it's fun but it gets intense at the same time." Tanev said. "It's a good way to get going before the game."
"It's a fun way to get the competitive juices flowing before a game," Rust said. "Warm up the legs, feel the body a little bit. It's just a lot of fun."
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