There are pitfalls to coming home after a long, successful road trip.

Like sliding into bad habits in your down time.

"Sitting around, watching TV, stuff like that," Penguins winger Tyler Kennedy said yesterday after the team practiced at Mellon Arena.

When the Penguins are not traveling, Kennedy likes to make sure he stays busy. That might mean going bike-riding with linemate Jordan Staal or taking in a movie with teammates.

"You try not to sit around the house," Kennedy said. "You try to get out and get some stuff done."

The Penguins will have some time to adjust to being home following a weeklong, 4-0 trip. They play their next five games -- and six of their next seven -- at home, starting with the one tonight against Tampa Bay.

It will be their longest homestand this season with the exception of a six-game stretch from late March to early April. By then, with the playoffs approaching, the Penguins should have a grasp on their identity.

This bank of home games comes just as the character of the 2009-10 Penguins is unfolding.

Wins at Philadelphia, Toronto, Ottawa and Carolina since they last played at Mellon Arena boosted them to a 6-1 start and gave at least some initial indications.

"Road trips early in the year can be a time when you can tell a lot about your team, and I think we answered some questions," said coach Dan Bylsma, who knows complacency can be another trap for a team settling into a homestand.

"You're back home. You take a deep breath. You come out not as hard, not as focused," he said. "We talk about that. You're talking about the mental side of it.

"This is our first chance to come home off of a road trip. We've had a successful road trip. Hopefully, we can bring that back home and build on the success that we've had."

At 5-0, the Penguins are off to their best road start in team history. At 1-1, they have only a small sampling of their work on home ice, and, in their last game at Mellon Arena, they were flat in a 3-0 loss against Phoenix Oct. 7, the eve of the road trip.

"We didn't have the greatest outing last time we were here, so, when that happens, you try to make sure the next time you're here in front of your fans you try to change that quickly and get back to your game," center Sidney Crosby said.

"We were able to kind of find ourselves on the road, and we've got to make sure that we take that approach here -- and even more so, make it tough on teams here."

There will be other road tests for the defending Stanley Cup champions -- a four-game trip in early November that includes stops on the West Coast, a five-game journey in mid-January that includes a western Canada swing, and five road games in a row in mid-March.

For now, the Penguins want to master playing at home. Tampa Bay might seem like an inviting club to face in the Penguins' situation. The Lightning are 0-2-1 on the road and absorbed a 7-1 pasting Thursday at Ottawa. The Penguins, however, are more concerned about replicating their results from the road trip.

"Coming back home, we know we're playing some good hockey. We know we can win," winger Pascal Dupuis said. "We know where our game stands right now. We've got to make sure we control our emotion."

Conventional hockey wisdom says teams tend to, or should, play a bit tighter on the road, but the Penguins are aggressive by nature under Bylsma's direction. They scored an average of four goals per game in regulation on their road trip.

"We got four, five goals in those games, so I don't think we're that conservative," goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury said. "We play the same way on the road."

Dupuis is among the Penguins who finds things quite a bit different depending on whether the team is at home or on the road.

"For me, I have three kids, so, obviously, it's a different flavor," he said.

"Away from the wife and the kids, you can sleep a little more. Home, it's just normal life. I try to spend as much quality time away from the rink as I can, try to be the best dad I can."

"It will be nice to be back home," Fleury said. "I almost forget what it's like after a long road trip."

NOTES -- The Penguins will wear their blue throwback uniforms tonight. ... Tampa Bay traveled here yesterday and held a late afternoon practice at Mellon Arena.

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