Tuesday the Penguins dropped their preseason contest to the Red Wings by a score of 6-2. Pittsburgh had what was pretty close to their regular season lineup in the game. You would probably like to see a better result given the fact they had a lot of good players going, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. It is preseason. The result only matters to gambling degenerates.

It doesn’t mean there isn’t anything worth bringing up. I was hoping to see Brian Dumoulin looking closer to his former self after having months to rehab his various ailments. Looks like I’ll have to hold out hope he gains more traction as the season gets closer.

Another significant lower-body injury hasn't done wonders for Brian Dumoulin's skating. Something worth monitoring into the season.

— Danny Shirey (@DannyShireyPGH) September 28, 2022

This is one of the biggest stories for me heading into the season. It was a great piece of business to get Kris Letang to re-sign with the team even with his advancing age. Letang was terrific last season. That said, it is too much to ask him to drag around a partner who isn’t moving at the standard of a top pairing player. The team is going to have to figure something out if the status quo remains. It isn’t fair to Letang and it isn’t fair to Dumoulin to be placed in a role above what he is capable.

Jeff Petry is going to help quite a bit in transition. He’s also a physical player. A little too physical on Tuesday

Pittsburgh’s Jeff Petry has been fined $5,000, the maximum allowable under the CBA, for Roughing Detroit’s Jonatan Berggren.

— NHL Player Safety (@NHLPlayerSafety) September 28, 2022

I wrote about trying Jason Zucker and Rickard Rakell as Crosby’s wingers. Mike Sullivan met me halfway. It looks like he is going to stick with his duos strategy leaving Jake Guentzel with Crosby and Bryan Rust with Malkin. The fact there are different options is a nice change of pace compared to some of the other recent seasons. Here is how things looked at practice this morning

Here is the Penguins' workflow without Carter and Blueger:

Guentzel-Crosby-Rakell
Zucker-Malkin-Rust
Heinen-Zohorna-Kapanen
McGinn-Poehling-Archibald (Poulin rotating in)

Dumoulin-Letang
Pettersson-Petry
Smith-Rutta
Friedman-Ruhwedel-Joseph

— Pens Inside Scoop (@PensInsideScoop) September 29, 2022

Unlike Dumoulin, Jason Zucker has shown himself well so far in the preseason. He looks healthy and ready to go. Given his cap hit and the team’s cap situation this is a bet they are going to have to have hit this season. Zucker scored the game winning goal against Columbus and added an assist against the Red Wings. We have a long way to go, but it is an encouraging start. If healthy, Zucker’s offensive regression this year should be favorable.

Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith don’t scream championship goalie tandem. At the same time they only make 5.3M combined. This allows for the *potential* for the team to spend wisely on depth players to make life easier on them. The Florida Panthers just gave Spencer Knight a 4.5M AAV after only 36 career games at a .909 career save percentage. This on top of the fact Sergei Bobrovsky is already sitting there making 10M in the starting role. Just an insane amount of money to be offering an RFA with little leverage. The entire situation is insane. They drafted Knight with the 13th overall pick and then 10 days or so later gave Bobrovsky his monster contract. Just an aimless situation for the Panthers who were showing signs of life as a franchise only to uproot a lot of things that were working for them this season.

Thanks for reading!

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