CRANBERRY TWP., Pa. - The Penguins’ lineup shuffle kept rolling Tuesday, with Bryan Rust back in a full-contact sweater, Hendrix Lapierre sliding into yet another new role and Andrei Kuzmenko looking like the odd man out.
Pittsburgh has already used three different lineup combinations in each of its first three games, a byproduct of injuries and a crowded roster. The Penguins won their first two outings and piled up 13 goals along the way, but Monday’s 3-2 loss to the Winnipeg Jets was a different story: slow, disjointed and missing the spark that carried the early stretch.
Rust returned to practice alongside Ben Kindel, the spot where he spent all of training camp before getting hurt in the preseason. He still hasn’t made his season debut, and coach Dan Muse again declined to say whether Rust would be in the lineup Wednesday against the Washington Capitals.
Ville Koivunen stayed with that group as well. He has appeared in two of Pittsburgh’s three games, scoring in the opener and adding an assist in Monday’s loss. He was the healthy scratch in the second game, one of the casualties of the team’s crowded depth chart.
“You know, taking Ville out of the lineup (was) a really hard decision,” coach Dan Muse said Saturday. “He didn’t deserve to come out. Like, that’s a tough thing to do as a coach and have that conversation, to look him in the eye and tell him he’s coming out of the lineup after he had the great summer he had, and (he’s) done everything that we’ve asked of him.”
Tuesday’s practice pointed to Kuzmenko sitting Wednesday. He was an extra on the ice, along with Elmer Soderblom and Filip Hallander, after an uneven showing Monday while skating with Kindel and Koivunen, then Hendrix Lapierre and Koivunen. It was Kuzmenko’s season debut after returning from Russia following the tragic death of his father.
Lapierre, meanwhile, keeps bouncing all over the board. He has already lined up as a third-line center, fourth-line winger and third-line winger, and now the Penguins appear ready to give him a look next to Sidney Crosby. To make that work, Nick Robertson was pushed down to the fourth line after a rough Monday.
The projected forward group had Lapierre with Crosby and Rickard Rakell on the top line, Egor Chinakhov with Tommy Novak and Evgeni Malkin on the second, Koivunen with Kindel and Rust on the third, and Connor Dewar with Blake Lizotte and Robertson on the fourth.
On defense, Pittsburgh had Declan Carlile with Erik Karlsson, Sam Girard with Kaedan Korczak, and Trevor van Riemsdyk with Kris Letang.
In goal, the Penguins listed Arturs Silovs and Sergei Murashov. Silovs was off the ice before Murashov, usually a sign that he’ll get the nod the next day, since the morning skate will be optional.
Karlsson’s practice look was hard to miss. He started the session with heavy black tape completely covering his visor, a change he joked about afterward.
“That was just funny. I think everyone didn’t feel their best yesterday.
Obviously, I did not. So you know, this was a good reset day for us,” Karlsson quipped.
“You know, we’re going to lose some games, some that we deserve to lose, some that we don’t. And yesterday was one of the ones that we probably did deserve to lose, but we still kept it tight.
And we had a chance, even though that was not even remotely close to one of our better games.”
Karlsson said he usually can shake off a bad outing, but Monday was different.
“I think we tried yesterday to (get out of the funk). I know I tried really hard to snap out of it, and usually I’m successful at it.
And yesterday I was not. It’s just the way it is,” said Karlsson.
“I think they probably felt a little bit quicker than us, and you know they probably felt good about their game, and we were the complete opposite …I mean, Sergei (Murashov) kept us in it for as long as he possibly could to give us a chance.”
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The timing of the move also reflects a bit of roster reshuffling behind the scenes, with Pittsburgh making room by dealing Filip Hallander to Edmonton for Spencer Stastney. Rusts presence should immediately change the look of the forward group, and the next question is how the Penguins line combinations settle once hes back in game action. [Read more 🡒]