There is finally some good news to share on the Evgeni Malkin front. Today, he practiced with the team in a full contact jersey. It marks one of the final steps before being cleared for game action. The Pittsburgh Penguins don’t play until Thursday so he will have another day to practice. The expectation is that he will be ready to play on Thursday night against the New Jersey Devils.
Missing the guys
This is excellent news for the team and for Malkin who has missed being around the team.
“The best feeling,” Malkin said of practicing. “You have more fun. When you skate alone, it’s not great. But [it was] a good day for me. I mean, tough, a little bit, but again, I’m happy to be back with the team [and] enjoy those guys. One more practice tomorrow and, like, I hope [to return] this week.”
It can be tough on injured players. If you aren’t able to skate with the team at practice it is likely that you aren’t on the road with the other players. Even when you are at home, you aren’t skating with the team and you are on your own before the actual practice. You miss out on the camaraderie and anybody who has played on a hockey team knows that is one of the best parts about playing the sport.
Given that it is one of Evgeni Malkin’s last seasons it had to have been eating him up to miss time while he was having one hell of a start to the season. In the 26 games played so far he has eight goals and 29 points on the season. He is 22nd in the league with 1.12 points per game. For context, Sidney Crosby is tied for 18th at 1.15. The two-headed monster is still a force to be reckoned with.
What actually happened to Malkin
For the most part, we have been left in the dark about Malkin’s injury. All we knew is it was week to week after being day to day. We didn’t know what body part or have an idea of how much progress was being made. Today, Malkin answered some of those questions.
“It’s, like, crazy because I’m not feeling any pain after the game,” Malkin said. “But the next morning I wake up and, like, my upper body, it’s like I can’t move my shoulder. It’s crazy.”
So we now know that Malkin was dealing with a shoulder injury which started to hurt the day after he scored the game winning goal latein the third period.
“We feel day by day and, like, I’m back,” Malkin said. “But I can’t move my arm. It’s a little bit tough. Again, I do my best; I work out, recover every day. But it’s not easy. It’s like a weird injury. Not, like, crazy — it’s small things, but it’s annoying.
“Every day is like pain. The last couple weeks, I do lots of stuff. The last, probably, three or four days, I feel so much better. I hope, again, [to be] back this week.”
It sounds like some real progress has been made during this past week. Malkin had been skating, but he hadn’t joined his teammates until today.
One concern Malkin has is getting his confidence up when he returns
“If you lost any games, you lost confidence a little bit,” Malkin said. “It’s always nervous [being] back; if you miss over 10 games, it’s probably like your confidence is not great. But I feel great. My body, I work out every day. My legs feel great. I need to play a couple shifts and I think I will be fine. We have a great team. My linemates, teammates support me so much.
“You need to play a little bit and you have your confidence back, for sure. It’s not my first time back from an injury. I’ve played here like 20 years. I know what it’s like feeling [that]. It’s just my body. I want to wake up tomorrow and feel great. And my confidence [will be] back.”
We all hope for the same. It has been a lot of fun watching Malkin this year. His line with Anthony Mantha and Justin Brazeau was very successful offensively. We don’t know for sure if this will be Malkin’s last year, but one thing is certain, he isn’t playing like it should be.
What to do with the lines?
With Evgeni Malkin coming back there will be some interesting choices to be made. The early portion of his absence the team was in disarray. They lost eight straight and didn’t have anything close to an optimal lineup. Rickard Rakell, Justin Brazeau, and Blake Lizotte all missed time during Malkin’s absence. Counting Malkin that is three top six (Muse’s deployment) players and the most impactful fourth line player.
With Malkin’s impending return all those players will be back in the lineup. Additionally, you have Yegor Chinakhov’s arrival to the team. There are quite a number of options you could go with.
One of the options would be to put Malkin right back with Brazeau and Mantha. The line had tremendous offensive results when they were together earlier in the year. This would bump Tommy Novak off the line and make him available to play elsewhere in the lineup. Likely with Kindel and Chinakhov. Although, you could leave Chinakhov-Kindel-Koivunen together and allow Novak to center both Blake Lizotte and Noel Acciari, I would have Connor Dewar as the odd man out.
Another option would be to play Malkin on the wing with Ben Kindel and Yegor Chinakhov, which would leave players like Ville Koivunen and Rutger McGroarty on the outside looking in if you kept Dewar-Acciari-Lizotte together. I don’t think this is a very likely outcome considering that Malkin is still most likely to remain at center. You could flip Kindel to wing and Malkin to center while keeping the same trio, but I think the team would like to keep Kindel at center.
If you wanted to get crazy what about awakening the two-headed monster? Have Malkin on Crosby’s wing with Bryan Rust. Leave Novak to play with Brazeau and Mantha. Then you can have Ben Kindel play with Rickard Rakell and Yegor Chinakhov.
I suppose what I’m getting at is that Dan Muse has a plethora of options with many of them being decent. A healthy Penguins roster boasts a highly functional forward group with potentially useful players on the outside looking in.
Whatever they go with Evgeni Malkin is coming back and that is awesome.
