Tuesday, 13 November 2012 11:21

Written by Shelly Anderson

It was a mostly quiet day at Southpointe, where these Penguins skated: defenseman Matt Niskanen and Ben Lovejoy, forwards Pascal Dupuis, Chris Kunitz, Matt Cooke, Craig Adams, Joe Vitale, Tyler Kennedy and Sidney Crosby, and goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury. Former Penguin Brent Johnson manned the other net, and there was one other invited skater, a friend of a player.

There were enough bodies for a five-on-five scrimmage, which was competitive but not very physical. Crosby had to adjourn to the locker room a couple of times because of a skate issue, and Cooke went with him to help. Cooke has been filling in as a skate sharpener during the lockout.

After practice, a couple of Penguins noticed a lunchtime pickup soccer game on the other rink at Southpointe. Kunitz joined to play goal, and Fleury joined to play forward. That side of the complex has a new soccer turf.

With no CBA talks scheduled as of midday, there wasn't a lot going on, but Canadian network TSN had a three-person crew there to talk to Crosby -- to essentially get him to say on camera what he told us Monday about his feelings at this point on negotiations.

By the way, we took video of Crosby and Dupuis doing some extra laps after practice Monday. We weren't able to get it attached to that day's practice post, but if you scroll down, it's embedded in Seth's Morning Link's entry. If you watch it, you'll see Crosby stumble on the net. He is human, after all. In fact, earlier in that day's session, during a short-rink scrimmage, Crosby tripped going around the back of one of the nets and did an impromptu belly flop, which brought a lot of laughter from his teammates, and from him.