Hallelujah!
Brian Dumoulin, John Marino and Nick Bjugstad are all on the ice for #Pens practice at PPG Paints Arena wearing full-contact jerseys. -MC
— Pens Inside Scoop (@PensInsideScoop) March 2, 2020
The two defensemen who hold the key to the Penguins bouncing back from a six game losing streak are full contact participants in practice. The Penguins desperately need these two to function. They now have a few practices under their belt and a return to the lineup looks very possible for tomorrow night. The first half of the week involves some lower end Eastern teams. Yeah yeah, I know the Penguins just dropped three straight to three of the worst teams in the Western Conference. It doesn’t change the fact the Senators and Sabres are lower end teams.
The difference between last week and this week is night and day because here are the lines and defense pairings
#Pens workflow...
— Pens Inside Scoop (@PensInsideScoop) March 2, 2020
Zucker-Crosby-Sheary
Bjugstad-Malkin-Rust
Rodrigues-McCann-Hornqvist
Tanev-Blueger-Lafferty
Dumoulin-Letang
Pettersson-Marino
Johnson-Schultz
Riikola-Ruhwedel
-SK
The only move that is left to be made on defense is subbing out Johnson for Riikola
Juuso Riikola's February wrap-up:
— Jesse Marshall (@jmarshfof) March 2, 2020
TOI: 99.28
xGF% Rel: +23.09%
CF% Rel: +11.91%
High Danger CF% Rel: +28.05%
All of these are tops for the Penguins over the course of the month.
If these decisions are performance based Johnson doesn’t have a spot, but they clearly are not performance based so we’ll take the top two pairings being functional again.
As for the forwards we don’t exactly know how things will shake out. Patrick Marleau is traveling with his family today from San Jose to Pittsburgh and wasn’t at practice. He was on the Malkin wing last game. I do not believe Nick Bjugstad will be filling that spot. I suppose there’s a chance Marleau fills that spot and Bjugstad is on the outside looking in for the next game while he continues to practice and heal. Bjugstad is practicing with the second power play so he is awfully close to returning. If they have a full lineup I would try the following
Zucker-Crosby-Sheary Marleau-Malkin-Rust McCann-Bjugstad-Hornqvist Tanev-Blueger-Rodrigues
We’ll have a better idea tomorrow when Marleau is at the morning skate, if they even have a morning skate and do line rushes at all.
The suggestion I have is by no means the only option. I wouldn’t mind seeing Bjugstad and Sheary switch with McCann moving to center just to see how things work. Many options to be had. The only constant I see at the moment is Zucker will play with Crosby, Rust will play with Malkin, and Tanev will play with Blueger. Other than that a lot of things are fair game. It is good to have options. They’ll have even more when Simon and hopefully Guentzel return.
Thanks for reading!