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The Penguins are back in action tonight against the Minnesota Wild at the CONSOL Energy Center.
There are still some bubble spots up for grabs and some things to watch for with the veteran players.
Here is a rundown of things to pay attention to tonight:
This will be the first preseason game in which the Penguins will employ 6 potential regular NHL defensemen. Paul Martin, Rob Scuderi, Simon Despres, Robert Bortuzzo, Scott Harrington, and Brian Dumoulin will all be in the lineup. Dumoulin and Harrington have the biggest threshold to overcome, they need to shine because of their waiver situation.
Can Scuderi start to look more comfortable on the ice? If he plays with Paul Martin and continues to look shaky I'm not sure what the solution is. Paul Martin makes everybody better.
Thomas Greiss and Jeff Zatkoff will be the two goalies. If Greiss sees more game action this evening will he be able to have another spectacular outing?
Nick Spaling’s first game with the Penguins was extremely uneventful. Will he be involved in some more significant plays tonight?
Beau Bennett was great in his first game. Is that the standard on a nightly basis? Will he continue to make plays with Brandon Sutter as his center? I want to see him fire the puck from the danger areas more often. If he is to play with Crosby eventually he needs to be a shooter.
Kasperi Kapanen had what I would consider a poor showing in his first game. It could have been first game jitters but it can’t continue if he is to make a serious run at the NHL roster. The bigger question probably isn’t whether or not he makes the Penguins, it is most likely whether or not he plays in WB/S or Sweden.
Jayson Megna and Oscar Sundqvist will both be in the lineup this evening. Both guys are going to be looking to earn a 4th line job. If Sundqvist shows that he can play at the NHL level sooner than later it would make things interesting on the Brandon Sutter front. Because as we saw the other night, Goc is good and having him as a third line center would work just fine.
Zach Sill can throw down 25 bodychecks tonight, but it doesn’t matter if he can’t make plays with the puck. The concept of a fourth line consisting of energy guys solely with the intent to play physical is antiquated and should be ditched. You need four lines of players who can make actual plays. If a fourth line player is extremely physical and can make plays, great, it’s a best case scenario. If he can make plays with the puck and isn’t physical, that is OK. Physical without being able to make plays is a worst case scenario and one Penguins fans got a healthy serving of last year.
I thought Patric Hornqvist was really good in his debut the other night. Was that the first game adrenaline that propelled his effort or is that the norm? I tend to think it is closer to the norm than an exception to the rule.
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I think if you look around the league and see the injuries to Jordan Staal, Pavel Datsyuk, and Derek Stepan you can understand why the Penguins are not pushing Crosby or Malkin at the present time. It has almost been five months since we have had the pleasure of seeing those superstars play, but what's another two weeks to wait, right?
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