Putting well-deserved respect on Pettersson's name
Following the conclusion of a mid-Winter practice at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex last season, I sat on the far side of the Penguins’ locker room chatting with Marcus Pettersson.
One of the biggest challenges I faced during my time on the beat was trying to form connections and build relationships with players during locker room access without wasting their time. If I didn’t need quotes from them for my reporting, I had no intention of making small talk for the sake of it.
Pretty much every player wants to get out of that locker room as quickly as possible, and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
Maybe that line of thinking held back the overall quality of my work. Maybe the players appreciated it. Either way, there were a handful of players who I could informally talk hockey with — meaning no recorder shoved in their face — without feeling like I was being annoying.
Pettersson was one of them.
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