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Evgeni Malkin is one of the injured Pittsburgh Penguins.
The Pittsburgh Penguins lost 5-0 to San Jose on Saturday night.
The team had a weak forecheck, didn’t play aggressive hockey and always seemed to be a step slower than their competition. It was bad news for a Penguins team that has been playing some unbelievable hockey this season.
Unfortunately, the news got worse. Kris Letang left the game in the first period with an apparent arm injury. Alex Goligoski played the entire game, but he was questionable to even dress on Saturday due to an illness. Having Letang out with an injury and Goligoski feeling less than optimal definitely hurt the Penguins.
Letang and Goligoski were expected to pick up the slack for the injured Sergei Gonchar and they were doing a fine job up until now. It’s unknown how the Penguins will be able to perform without both Letang and Gonchar in the lineup.
Letang will be evaluated by doctors today.
Of course, Gonchar and Letang are not the only injuries hurting the Penguins. Playoff MVP and reigning Art Ross Trophy winner Evgeni Malkin has not played since October 28th. Winger Tyler Kennedy has been in and out of the lineup with a groin injury and game seven hero Max Talbot has yet to play this season.
That leaves the Penguins lacking a great deal of scoring power due to injury.
However, the Penguins are not the only NHL team dealing with injuries right now. Almost every club has at least one significant player missing from their roster.
Ilya Kovalchuk, Marc Savard, Eric Staal, Cam Ward, Jonathan Toews, Johan Franzen, Petr Sykora, Andrei Markov, Simon Gagne, Victor Hedman, Mike Komisarek, Roberto Luongo, Daniel Sedin, Alexander Ovechkin and Mike Green are just some of the players currently on the shelf.
Sidney Crosby has been seeing more of the opposition's top defense.
If there is any good news in this situation for the Penguins it’s that it is still early in the year and none of the current injuries are season-threatening. By December – baring any additional problems – Gonchar, Talbot and Malkin should be back in the lineup. Kennedy and Letang should be back even sooner.
What is a problem right now is that Sidney Crosby has lost a lot of his supporting cast. Jordan Staal has stepped up to the plate, but opposing teams are able to focus on Crosby more knowing that Malkin is out of the lineup. This makes Crosby less effective and therefore the Penguins less successful.
Case in point: Crosby has had zero points in the last four games. That is definitely a sign that, without Malkin, the opposition is able to focus almost all of their defensive efforts on number 87. This leaves the Penguins first line effectively neutralized. Without Malkin, the second line isn’t producing either. The very successful Kennedy-Staal-Cooke third line has been broken up due to injuries as well. What you are left with is three lines that have been considerably weakened.
This is why the Pittsburgh Penguins struggling. However, the Penguins are not blaming injuries for their recent losses to San Jose and Los Angeles.
“Good teams overcome injuries,” Matt Cooke told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“Sometimes you do have to change the way you play when you’re missing three offensive threats — especially the power play. You change your ways a little bit. You prepare yourselves to win games 1-0 or 2-1. I think at this point we haven’t really made that adjustment and put our mindset to do the right things to win games like that.”
In order to keep winning the Penguins will definitely have to make some adjustments.
Rick Moldovanyi is a freelance journalist from Toronto. He covers the Pittsburgh Penguins at Penguins Experience and has written for several publications in the Toronto area.
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