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Penguins head into camp limping both physically and metaphorically |
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Penguins training camp kicks off today and will be missing two giants. Both Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are out of action due to injury. This leaves Kris Letang as the sole member on the ice from the 2009 Stanley Cup team, for now.
Sidney Crosby is skating just not with the team. His wrist shouldn’t impede his ability to keep conditioning his legs for the upcoming season
This training camp unlike the previous years will afford some young players the opportunity to crack the lineup. Recently, the roster was pretty set in stone heading into the new season. With the injuries to Crosby and Malkin and the underwhelming quality of depth players there is real opportunity for players like Filip Hallander, Sam Poulin, Filip Lindberg, and Nate Legare to get hot in camp and outright make the team. Radim Zohorna is another player of interest heading into camp.
It is my hope, as it is every year, that the younger players get put with quality NHL players to try and make the most of the limited sample size of training camp. You might not know for sure if they are legit for the long haul, but usually you can tell if they aren’t ready for prime time. I liken it to not being able to win a golf tournament on the front nine, but you can definitely play yourself out of it.
Other areas of interest include newcomers like Brock McGinn, Danton Heinen, and Brian Boyle. McGinn used up what little cap space the Penguins had and he is going to have to live up to it. If he cannot provide contributions in sync with his cap hit it will have been yet another mid-tier contract mistake for the Penguins. Fair or not he makes roughly the same amount of money as Jared McCann who was foolishly given away for nothing over the offseason.
As far as the veterans of the team go we have a good chunk of players heading into the final year of their contracts. Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang are the obvious two people talk about the most, but Bryan Rust and Jeff Carter are UFA’s while Kasperi Kapanen will be a pending RFA. Depending on how the standings look throughout the season we may see the Penguins holding firm with this group or we may see longtime Penguins like Rust being shopped for futures if the current product goes stale this season.
This is the reality when you are in the very late stages of a contending window. The hope other teams are feeling for a new season doesn’t quite resonate or hit the same way when you know the sand in the hourglass is running out. It’s made tougher when the team is responsible for putting self-inflicted cracks into the hourglass themselves. They better hope these kids can play.
Thanks for reading!
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
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