Five weeks into the season, it's become clear that first-year Baby Pens coach John Hynes is more of a stern taskmaster than either of his two predecessors in Wilkes-Barre, Dan Bylsma and Todd Reirden.
Even though the team is off to a 10-1 start, his practices have been fairly long and intense.
During one recent skate, he stopped practice to chew out winger Eric Tangradi for failing to complete a drill, then made the Penguins' top prospect skate the length of the ice twice before the workout resumed.
It's clear they players are responding well. It remains to be seen if they start tuning him out like most "taskmasters" eventually are, but then again, having intense practices doesn't necessarily make Hynes a stereotypical TM in the vein of a Michel Therrien -- there's a lot of other factors that go into that, and from what I've heard/read thus far, Hynes seems to be straddling the line quite well thus far.
