Pittsburgh will get another crack at the Carolina Hurricanes tonight and there are some roster changes due to injury and necessity. Brian Dumoulin has a concussion and Carter Rowney is week to week with an injury. Neither player will be available tonight.
Here are what the lines looked like:
Simon-Crosby-Sheary
Hornqvist-Malkin-Kessel
Hagelin-Guentzel-Sprong
Kuhnhackl-Sheahan-Reaves
Hunwick-Letang
Cole-Schultz
Maatta-Oleksiak
This is an effort to create three scoring lines and not have the worst fourth line possible. Riley Sheahan is a fourth line center and that’s where he is now. He’s a fourth line center because he isn’t an above average passer and he doesn’t score enough goals to make up for it in my opinion. He’s certainly been better since the beginning of the season. Possession wise he’s been fine. The reason for the move was to make room for Jake Guentzel at the center position. This is the best option for the team right now. If there is no center market for Jim Rutherford then something has to give. They can’t keep rolling Riley Sheahan out there and expect it to be a scoring line. The fact is I’d rather have Guentzel acclimate himself to the center position at the NHL level than keep playing Sheahan in that role.
Dominik Simon is back up on the top line with Sidney Crosby. This is fine for the short term as the team waits for Bryan Rust to return to the lineup. When Rust comes back I would return to a Sheary-Crosby-Hornqvist top line and put Rust on the left wing with Malkin and Kessel.
Conceptually, the third line is pretty solid. Sprong is still a question mark because we don’t have a lot of NHL action to form an opinion on yet. Guentzel is a great passer and Sprong’s release is ridiculous. I like the idea of that combo taking advantage of time and space. Hopefully it pans out. We’ll see.
The fourth line is what it is. It was successful last game. Will there be consistent success? I have my doubts.
As for the defense pairings I like Hunwick with Letang for two reasons. The first is that I think Brian Dumoulin will be playing with Letang as soon as he returns from his concussion. This leaves the other pairings undisturbed, especially the Maatta-Oleksiak one that is new. Also, if you want to shed Hunwick’s contract what better way to do so then pumping up his value playing with the Penguins best defenseman?
Matt Murray will get the start in net. Tristan Jarry did practice so fortunately it does not seem as the injury that forced him out of action is too bad.
Thanks for reading!
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