Penguins Camp Buzz: What to Read Into Early Lines

Penguins Training Camp is Underway: Here are storylines & Buzz from Day 1:

Hinostroza – Crosby – Rust

Crosby’s Left Wing: No Jake Guentzel for the next little bit means audition time on Sidney Crosby’s left wing. Often times you’ll see a younger player get a look early on with a Crosby or Evgeni Malkin. Day one of camp saw 29 year old Vinnie Hinostroza flanking Crosby’s left wing.

Crosby loves playing with wingers who can skate well and are puck hunters on the forecheck, two areas Hinostroza excels at, but the ‘read into meter’ here is pretty low that this is something we’ll see much of when things get serious near end of camp. Crosby embracing the possibility of playing the regular season with two right-handed wingers is also not happening.

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Johnsson – Malkin – Smith

Front Office high on Johnsson?: There’s no true audition on Sidney Crosby’s line. When Jake Guentzel’s healthy, he’ll be Crosby left’s winger and either Bryan Rust who Crosby always prefers, or Rickard Rakell/Reilly Smith will be on Crosby’s right wing.

Where there’s wiggle room for someone outside of the clear top-six forwards to emerge is on Malkin’s wing. To read this insider news, subscribe to get “Inside Access”!

The Bottom-Six

As the Penguins feel they have built a more defensive minded, 200 ft group among their bottom-tier forward groups, on paper the Penguins have serious question marks in their bottom-six that the group will be able to provide adequate offense. Another question is will Mike Sullivan be able to help himself go against the lure of loading up the top 6? Pittsburgh’s so called third line to open camp was:

Drew O’Connor – Lars Eller – Rickard Rakell. O’Connor To read this insider news, subscribe to get “Inside Access”!

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Another Line with Staying Power?

Another unit with likely staying power was Pittsburgh’s DeFacto 4th line to open camp in Matt Nieto – Noel Acciari – Jeff Carter. Seen some stuff out there that Nieto could be a cut candidate if Pittsburgh had a surprise player emerge but internally Nieto is considered pretty locked in. The front office is pretty high on what he’s going to bring to the table.

The wild card with this group is more Jeff Carter. Mike Sullivan, though, has been a strong supporter of Carter’s to the new management team that Carter provides an important role moving forward and as expected Carter’s opened camp on a regular line. Sidney Crosby values Carter’s leadership and what he brings to the room as that also can’t be overlooked. To the fan bases dismay, Carter is expected to get a pretty good 15-20 game To read this insider news, subscribe to get “Inside Access”!