Graves: ‘I know that I’m still a good player’

Ryan Graves harbors a resolutely positive attitude.

With long hair and a habit of talking about good vibes, he has an appearance and presence more akin to a professional surfer than NHL defenseman.

And even despite a rocky first season as a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins, he maintained optimism throughout the 2023-24 campaign.

As the crown jewel of the team’s fleet of free agent signings in the 2023 offseason — he signed one of the largest contracts in franchise history at six years and $4.5 million a season — Graves carried massive expectations upon joining the Penguins.

And fell well short of meeting them.

Even with his trademark alacrity, Graves fully realizes this.

“I know I’m not thrilled with how I played last year,” Graves said Wednesday in Cranberry. “I know it’s not to my standard. I feel confident I’ll be better this year. A lot was made of it. The media loves a negative storyline. If you read the storylines, you’d think I had played bad every night. That’s not the case. I’m a guy that prides myself in consistency and being reliable and that just wasn’t there. There was good games, there was bad games. I’m able to look at the good ones and improve.”

Graves opened the 2023–24 season on the top pairing with Kris Letang. Expected to serve as a replacement for Brian Dumoulin, one of the greatest defensive defenseman to wear a Penguins jersey, Graves largely failed to establish chemistry with Letang and then was teamed with the team’s other All-Star defenseman, Erik Karlsson.

When that union didn’t generate the desired results, Graves found himself skating on the third pairing.

He might have finished the season in that deployment, but a concussion he suffered March 28 sidelined him for the final 10 games of 202324 and brought his unappetizing first campaign with the Penguins to a premature conclusion.

“Those injuries are hard,” Graves said. “I’ve had a few. It’s a tough one because you don’t feel it right away. When it first happened, I finished my shift. I was fine. It was a very innocent hit. I’m sure if you watch the game, you’re not even going to find it (the hit). You just don’t feel right. I had a headache right away. So you know something’s off. Honestly, I felt worse three days after than I did that night. It was good that there’s the (NHL’s concussion protocol) in place. The doctors made the call that it was time not to go back just to be safe.

“I thought, since it was a small hit, it was going to be a quick recovery. But each one is different. I just didn’t feel better for a long time. I was trending. I think if we would have made the playoffs, I would have played.”

In the early stages of training camp, Graves mostly has been deployed on a pairing with Jack St. Ivany. While it’s foolhardy to put much weight into lines and pairings in late September, it doesn’t seem as though coaches are keen to break up the other pairings of Letang and newcomer Matt Grzelcyk or Karlsson and Marcus Pettersson.

Regardless, Graves has garnered a strong forecast from those determining the lineup.

“Ryan’s second year now, he comes back to Pittsburgh, he has, I think, an understanding of what the expectations are,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “He has more of a comfort level with his surroundings. He has established relationships with his coaching staff. There’s a lot of things — just familiarity — that might help a player like Ryan in that second year in making that adjustment. We know that Ryan has the ability to be more of an impact player. We anticipate that he will be.”

Graves is positive that will be the case.

“Put a lot of work off the ice to be better this year and to continue to improve, be better for my teammates,” Graves said. “I’m looking forward to it. The summer’s long when you have a little bit of a sour taste in your mouth. I’m happy to be back, and I’m looking to put in a lot of work to be reliable and to be a good player.

“I know that I’m still a good player.”