Good morning everyone. Here is today’s Petr Sykora arrives article.

I’ll be back around 11:15ish to give you play-by-play from today’s scrimmage.

As you can read in the Sykora story, I talked to a bunch of people the last few days about what went wrong with Sykora down the stretch last season. He had 23 goals (14 on the power play, which was second in the league at the time) through 60 games or so, and then inexplicably looked like a different Petr Sykora.

That’s because it was a different Sykora. Talking to some media in Pittsburgh and a few friends of Sykora’s, he separated his shoulder in early March last season. But he kept playing through it and the Penguins never told anyone because of everybody’s favorite injury policy. Sykora’s game is all about his shot, and all of a sudden, he could barely hold a stick and when he took shots, there was just no mustard.

Finally, he was sat for much of the playoffs. That was everybody’s last memory of him, which explains why he couldn’t find a job this summer.

He says he feels the best he’s felt in a long time now, and we’ll see soon if he is the same consistent scorer he’s always been. He’s only 32, so it’s hard to believe that a guy just instantly loses his game in March and April after having it the first five months of last season.

Sykora was brought in to Pittsburgh two seasons ago to play with Sidney Crosby. But they never meshed and Sykora was moved onto Evgeni Malkin’s line. The two developed quite the chemistry. The writer I talked to in Pittsburgh said that Sykora was an incredible influence on Malkin and that the players loved Sykora in the locker room.

By the way, here is video of Sykora’s double-overtime winner against the Wild in Game 1 of the 2003 Western Conference Finals as a friendly reminder.

“Actually that could have been one of the worst hockey games I ever played. I don’t think I touched the puck the whole game and all of a sudden I went 2-on-1 in the overtime. … It’s one of those games where nothing goes well for you and all of a sudden you become a hero.

“Over the years, I played in this building quite a bit. I always like to come to this building because of the fans. It’s a great hockey arena here. It was one of the big things that made me decide to come here – the arena, the people, the fans and new era, new team, new coach and I think this team will play offensive hockey.”

Lastly, coach Todd Richards was funny yesterday talking about the exhibition game. He said he probably got a little too fired up in his pregame speech, almost like it was a regular-season game. He said that’s the one thing he could take back — his speech, that apparently was sprinkled with a few words that can’t appear in the newspaper or even on a blog.

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