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Pens building chemistry
Audio: Gonchar's OT winner
Makes up for poor regulation play
Rob Rossi is the Penguins beat writer. He can be reached via e-mail. Also check out Rossi's blog or follow him on Twitter.
He has played with four times that many defense partners.
"It has been different for me, but through injuries and adversity you have to mix and match," Sydor said. "In Dallas (from 1996-2003) I always played with Sergei Zubov. That was seven years with the same guy."
Sydor signed with the Penguins as a free agent over the summer and opened camp paired with Sergei Gonchar, an experiment that lasted about seven days.
Sydor started the season playing with Rob Scuderi. He also has played occasionally with rookie Kris Letang, and he will likely team with Ryan Whitney tonight when the Penguins take on the Buffalo Sabres at Mellon Arena.
Understand that Sydor is not complaining. After a stretch of not playing in November, he is thrilled for any opportunity to contribute. The Penguins need him to do exactly that now that they are without the services of Mark Eaton, who will miss an indefinite amount of time with a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
The loss of Eaton, arguably the club's most steady defenseman, forced coach Michel Therrien and his staff to rework the defense pairings.
Eaton and Gonchar had become the Penguins' version of a classic dynamic duo. Therrien deployed that pairing against top scoring lines. Gonchar will still draw duty against opponents' best forwards, along with Scuderi.
Brooks Orpik, a healthy scratch in three consecutive games before playing against Washington on Thursday, is skating with Letang, the only right-handed shooting defenseman on the roster.
Orpik spent much of last season playing with Whitney, who recently was moved to the right side and is working with Sydor.
"There have been a lot of changes, but these are professional players that have been through this many times," assistant coach Andre Savard said. "Being in the NHL, adjustments are part of the deal. You have to accept there are going to be changes."
More to the point, Scuderi said, a player has to adjust quickly to a new playing partner.
"It takes a couple of periods, maybe a game, to get used to the tendencies of a new partner," Scuderi said. "But it is not that complicated. You have to talk it out and figure out what happened in certain situations and make some type of compromise."
Eaton proved invaluable to the Penguins because his consistency within the defensive zone freed Gonchar to boost the club's scoring changes with his world-class offensive skill.
Scuderi said one way to quickly develop chemistry with Gonchar is to learn from Eaton's method for success.
"I talked to (Gonchar) and said, 'Look, you are the offensive guy and I am staying back; let me know what you like to do, because I am very flexible,'" Scuderi said. "I think (Eaton) took the same approach. We are both defensive guys, and the idea is to let (Gonchar) do his thing offensively."
That is the idea. The hope, said Sydor, is that the defense corps is comprised of players that are interchangeable parts that complement one another.
"The key is to keep it simple," Sydor said. "Good defense is all about simplicity, and it is important too have good chemistry with your defense partner. Guys defend differently, but the surest way to play is to keep everything simple, play the puck quick, stay on your side of the ice and just react.
"But it takes practice, a lot of practice. You can never have enough. That is how the chemistry develops. That is the only way it can."
