Unfortunately, after downplaying the situation over the weekend and claiming Evgeni Malkin was day-to-day with an injury, the Pittsburgh Penguins dropped this on everyone today.
This is not the news anybody wanted. We have a broken Geno Machino. Right now, the injury is being labeled as week-to-week and involves the upper body. At age 39 Malkin is having a tremendous season putting up 29 points in 26 games. He is one point behind Sidney Crosby for the team lead and is a big reason the Penguins are in the thick of the playoff race. This is objectively bad news.
My frustration with Pittsburgh’s injury communication
Personally, one of the things that has bothered me over the years is this exact situation. We have what I feel is a cornucopia of examples in this era where this exact situation plays out. The Penguins will downplay a potential injury to a player by calling it day-to-day and then you get blindsided with the week-to-week diagnosis.
Another common variable is that these players play and finish the game prior to the week-to-week timeline. Evgeni Malkin and Blake Lizotte were out late in the third periods of their last game played. It has gotten to the point for me where the day-to-day assessment is a meme.
It was so ridiculous back in 2017 that I wrote an entire piece about it. Here are some passages from that blog:
And this isn’t the first time that I’ve used this logic only to have an IR announcement the next day. It got me thinking and I couldn’t shake the feeling that this is something that has happened quite a number of times.
I was right.
The motivation for this blog was derived from Kris Letang. I remember making mental notes on multiple occasions Letang looked hurt in a game, finished the game, and then missed multiple games. I didn’t want to assume my mental notes were correct so that is why I started looking up the shift charts. Unfortunately, I was right to do so. This kind of thing happened multiple times during the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons to Letang. The latest example happened on December 14th of this season against the Boston Bruins. Letang suffered a lower body injury.
As we know Evgeni Malkin missed the next game against the Boston Bruins and also All Star Weekend. He has yet to practice with the team and there are no plans for him to do so tomorrow. He will probably miss more games this weekend.
Last year Malkin was hurt in a February 2nd game against the Ottawa Senators. He didn’t miss a shift
Geno went on to miss ten games.
Another 2016-17 instance of this happened during the 8-7 Capitals game with Matt Cullen.
Matt Cullen broke his foot during the thrilling 8-7 victory over the Washington Capitals. The IR announcement came the next day despite Cullen playing a regular shift until the end of the game.
The most famous example of this happening was when Sidney Crosby was blindsided by David Steckel
Those are just some of the excerpts from the piece. There are shift charts showing these players finishing the games and then the news of them missing games.
Point being, this is a Groundhog Day scenario for the franchise. I’m kinda over it. I’m also grumpy to lose Malkin for an extended time period in what could be his final season with him playing so well, ugh.
The new lines
Here are how the lines look with Malkin and Lizotte missing
I’m interested to see if Tommy Novak can seize the opportunity to play and work off of Sidney Crosby. He has the skating, hands, and passing to potentially find some good results. The big variable will be if he goes hard. Over the many years the players who do best with Crosby are the ones who try and match his work ethic. It doesn’t always mean the player has to be physical, they just need to be going at all times. Examples include: Marian Hossa, Chris Kunitz, Jake Guentzel, Conor Sheary, Bryan Rust, Patric Hornqvist, Pascal Dupuis etc… Novak needs to bring that energy.
The kid line should operate as a top six line. I would throw them some real minutes and see what happens. They’ve killed the depth minutes they’ve received to this point. Time to throw them into the fire a little more. I spoke yesterday about how they need to step up their 5v5 production to match their xGF% results. Let’s see it, now.
As for the Anthony Mantha And Justin Brazeau line there are no good answers to replacing Malkin. It isn’t a next guy up kind of thing with a guy over a point per game. If they want to see Kevin Hayes in that spot, so be it. He isn’t fleet of foot, but Malkin isn’t exactly making people double take the radar gun these days, either. He has good hands and good passing. Perhaps, he can play the poor man Malkin role. If not, he can flip flop with Danton Heinen.
Some promising injury news
The Malkin news is certainly a bummer so I am going to end with some good news on the injury front.
The first step to any injured player returning is getting them back on the ice with their teammates. The next step is getting cleared for contact…
I’m not going to lie I’m a little surprised to see this. Just the other day Dubas put a 3-4 week timeline on Rakell’s return
While I am excited to get Rickard Rakell closer to a return I also have some reservations about what to take at face value about Penguins injuries. I just hope they don’t try and rush him back because of the Malkin injury.
If he’s cleared for contact and goes through the proper preparation to return it will really help out the team. Rakell has been missed.
When he returns he can go right back to the Crosby line and it can open up Novak to center the Mantha and Brazeau line.
Puck drops at 7PM tonight with Arturs Silovs in net.
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Tagged: nhl, Pittsburgh Penguins