Phil at Pens golf tourny, Crosby vs. USA

Finally a few actual Pittsburgh Penguins news and notes, coming from Tuesday's annual summer golf outing.

Stanley Cup champion Phi Kessel acknowledged that his summer hand surgery will limit his training camp participation but he's still shooting to be in the opening night lineup.

"I'll obviously be out there skating in camp," Kessel said. "I'll progress as it goes. But I'll be ready to start the first game of the year.... It feels a lot better now than it did last year."

Kessel has played every game in the past 6+ seasons and doesn't expect this to break that streak. "I just try to always play, no matter what," he said. "I've got to be really banged up to not play."

***

Another player in good spirits was Trevor Daley, after missing the last 9 games of the playoffs with a broken ankle, the defenseman seems to be 100% again now.

"I'm ready to go," Daley said. "I'm excited to get going here and get started."

Daley noted that he's been working at full tilt for the last 3-4 weeks and doesn't have any lingering concern.

"I don't feel like I've missed a step at all."

***

Kris Letang got some well-deserved time off this summer after playing an unreal 28:53 a night in 23 playoff games.

"I took a good month off," Letang said. "I was a little bit banged up. I didn't do anything for a full month."

When considering a lot of the top Pens players at the World Cup, Letang thought many candidates could step up, but singled out a fellow defenseman in particular.  "Everybody grew as a player last year with the run that we had. With [Brian] Dumoulin, he's got a full year with the big minutes he played."

***

Sidney Crosby was fairly quiet in Team Canada's 4-2 victory over USA last night. Crosby only played 15:31, and that's all he has to do on most nights with a team as deep and dangerous as Canada. No harm, no foul, one more game over and closer to being back in Pittsburgh.