Penguins/NHL
It’s rarely a good sign when a team on a road trip sends a player back home to be evaluated for an injury.
Will the Penguins now be down one of their most important wingers for some time?
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The Penguins are unsure how much time winger Patric Hornqvist will miss but the team on Sunday felt it was necessary to send Hornqvist back to Pittsburgh for evaluation due to an upper body injury.
This will be Hornqvist’s second stint on the shelf this season, after missing the start of the season with a wrist injury.
Hornqvist’ rugged style of play as he turns 31 in January has been one reason of pause in the Penguins organization to offer significant term on a new deal.
Whether Hornqvist misses just a couple games or 10-15 games, this is a big blow to a team that has been atrocious in scoring at even strength this season and whose coaching staff feels the team as a whole isn’t creating enough net-front traffic, as there’s no replacing Hornqvist in how good he is in getting into the sight lines of opposing goaltenders.
He’s also been one of the Penguins most productive forwards.
If the Hornqvist injury becomes more than day-to-day, now the microscope will be on the Penguins in regards to what they do with the lineup and any roster moves.
For tonight against Colorado, Josh Archibald and Tom Kuhnhackl will both draw into the lineup if Dominik Simon is unable to play due to an illness.
A long-term Hornqvist injury, though, will bring even more outside noise to the Penguins needing to recall Daniel Sprong.
But would they?
Sprong has had an up and down season with 15 goals and 7 assists in 25 games. However, he’s been red-hot of late with 6 goals and 8 points in his last seven games.
Penguins GM Jim Rutherford has been leaning on Assistant GM Bill Guerin on when the time is right to bring Sprong up. Guerin has been among those working the closest with Sprong to improve his play away from the puck and other areas the Penguins want to see improvement before making a call-up.
After making Sprong a healthy scratch a few weeks ago and bumping him down the lineup, Guerin and others have been pushing Sprong really hard to see how he would react and the organization has been impressed with the mental toughness Sprong is showing, a source says.
The sense is Pittsburgh wants to feel comfortable enough with Sprong that when they call him up, he’s going to stick in the NHL. They don’t want a situation of going back-and-forth.
There seems to be some movement for Sprong over the past couple weeks but is enough yet to satisfy the Penguins?
We’ll see on that.
— The elephant in the room for the Penguins right now is the Ryan Reaves experiment.
It’s just not working and the coaching staff is handcuffed with what sources say pretty much is a mandate from Jim Rutherford wanting Reaves in the lineup every game.
Saturday’s game vs Arizona was another situation where Pittsburgh was forced to play shorthanded in tight game at forward as the coaching staff obviously doesn’t feel Reaves brings much of anything to the table when Pittsburgh is involved in close games.
Reaves played just 3:50 and had one shift in the second period and one shift in the third period.
Jim Rutherford believes Reaves’ presence has deterred things against some of the Penguins’ star talent.
What Reaves has deterred is the Penguins able to put any resemblance of a scoring 4th line on the ice or a line the coaching staff can trust in competitive games.
Pittsburgh could easily move Reaves out West, where he’s more suited to play a heavy game, but for now the Penguins don’t seem interested in admitting a mistake and moving on.
In St. Louis, Reaves was getting 12-13 minutes a night in the final quarter of last season. Over his final 19 regular season games, Reaves played 10 minutes or more in 16 of the 19, sometimes seeing 13-14 minutes a night on a few occasions. Reaves also played at least nine minutes in seven of 11 playoff games with the Blues last post-season.
There’s little chance Reaves in a contract year is happy with his role either and no way he will be content sitting in the press box.
If Pittsburgh comes to their senses to go in a different direction and take Reaves out of the lineup as a regular, we’d more likely see a trade rather quickly than Reaves just becoming the 13th forward and being fine with it. [/hide]
