Apparently, Phil Kessel’s teammates aren’t quite finished enjoying his post-game interview with NBCSN’s Pierre McGuire.
Per the Penguins’ Twitter feed, a bottle of Cool Mint Listerine has been placed atop Kessel’s dressing-room stall at Amalie Arena in Tampa Bay.
There also appears to be some Winterfresh gum in there.
We all know the backstory by now. Following Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Final on Wednesday, McGuire asked Kessel, “How’s your breath?” To which Kessel replied, “It’s not good, eh?” To which McGuire said, “No! I meant in terms of conditioning.” Kessel laughed, hid his face in his towel for a second, then earnestly answered the question. When the interview was over, he chuckled again and said he couldn’t believe what just happened.
Pittsburgh captain Sidney Crosby said the Penguins “had a good laugh” about the awkwardness of the whole thing.
“First of all, I think it was funny, it was awesome,” Crosby told reporters. “I think that anyone being asked that question, I think we’ve all probably thought to ourselves, ‘How do you answer that?’ It’s kind of a tough one to answer and he handled it great. It was pretty funny. It’s probably perfect that it was Phil because he’s probably the one to handle it as good as that.”
For all that "bad breath"... pic.twitter.com/YDYfp7ABy1
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) May 20, 2016
Penguins coach Mike Sullivan was asked this morning about the Listerine bottle.
“That’s part of being part of a close-knit team,” he said. “These guys, they don’t miss much. So when they have opportunities to have some fun with one another, I think that’s a good thing. I think it brings our team even closer together, and that’s an example of it.”
Game 4 goes tonight. The happy-go-lucky Pens lead the series, 2-1.