Acting “rashly,” Pens defenseman Kris Letang committed a careless error during locker room clean-out today, creating yet another odd-man rush of media that has plagued the team all postseason.
“I put myself ahead of the team,” Letang lamented later today after the miscue. “I tried to make a cute play and pass a question cross-locker room to Jake Guentzel instead of keeping it simple and falling back on hockey cliches, and the media pounced on it. It shows how disciplined they’ve been all series: they had their mics and tape recorders clogging up all the lanes before I could even second-guess myself.”
Letang then backed towards his own stall while Brian Dumolin was stuck up the room, having assumed his defense partner would safely clear the question. He tried to angle the oncoming media away from goaltender Matt Murray, who was forced to endure the onslaught.
“Not much you can do in those situations,” Murray said. “You do your best to stand tall and block off as many questions as you can, but it’s tough. After they moved the microphone from left to right enough, there wasn’t much I could do. They had someone sitting on the backdoor ready to tap a question in on me.”
Coach Mike Sullivan defended his veteran defenseman.
“Kris is a dynamic interviewer; there’s no denying that,” he said. “For every mistake like you saw today, he makes four, five highlight reel-worthy answers in that locker room. We want to minimize mistakes, sure, but we will continue to encourage Kris to make that special kind of quotes that only he can.”
Things fared even more poorly for Olli Maatta who was planted on the far end of the room after media blew by him twice within the first five minutes of the session.
