The Pittsburgh Penguins welcomed some familiar faces back to full practice today.
Paul Martin, Jayson Megna, and Chuck Kobasew all returned to full practice today.
The presence of Martin and Megna is a welcomed sight. Paul Martin has been the Penguins most dependable and best player at the defense position for the past year and a half. Anytime you lose a player of that caliber your team is not as good as it could be.
The return of Jayson Megna allows Brandon Sutter to appropriately regain his role as a third line center.
While Sutter may have done an OK job filling in on the top line, it also meant that the 3rd line was a hot mess with him not playing on it.
Here were the line combinations at practice:
Kunitz-Crosby-Megna Jokinen-Malkin-Neal Glass-Sutter-Pyatt Adams-Sill-Kobasew
The bottom 6 is still a mess but I like the idea of Megnatron playing with the Crosby unit a lot more than I do Brandon Sutter.
Brandon Sutter made a beautiful move to create time and space which gave him the ability to set up Jussi Jokinen's game tying goal, but I thought he struggled with his zone exits by the defensive blue line. He had multiple turnovers and did not look very comfortable in that area on the ice.
The fact is I don't blame Sutter for that, he is a center by trade and that is where he should play. He did the best he could in a non ideal situation.
I know what I am about to say is crazy talk but it looks like the Penguins will finally play another game with their full complement of defensemen available:
Scuderi-Letang Orpik-Martin Maatta-Niskanen Bortuzzo-Engelland
I think in the present moment the Maatta-Niskanen pairing is the Penguins best duo. That should come as no surprise as Niskanen and Maatta have not dealt with the injuries that Scuderi, Letang, Orpik, and Martin have.
The Penguins first power play unit will use Crosby, Kunitz, and Neal up front with Letang and Malkin on the points.
I favor Martin on the #1 power play but it is not time to overreact about his absence from that unit. Let's let Martin get a few games under his belt before the Penguins throw in back into the fire.
The Penguins have no excuses to not execute on the power play.
Beau Bennett, Andrew Ebbet, and Brian Gibbons all skated before the Penguins official practice on their own.
The mailbag submissions have been great so far and I will post my responses to the many questions I received tomorrow morning. My responses have already hit the 5,000 word barrier, so needless to say it was a HUGE mailbag.
Thank you to the folks that took the time to submit a question.
If you want to ask a question and have not done so yet, it is not too late, do so here:
That's your Saturday update.
Thanks for reading!