The Pittsburgh Penguins dealing with a magnitude of injuries is nothing new. The team has shown over the years they are equipped to deal with them in the short-term.

Pittsburgh already missing Kris Letang, Trevor Daley, Olli Maatta, Carl Hagelin, and Bryan Rust to long-term injuries, will get Patric Hornqvist (concussion) back in the lineup tonight, but the injury report got even longer as Evgeni Malkin and Ron Hainsey are out tonight.

Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan said this morning that Malkin who participated briefly in the morning skate, has been dealing with an upper body injury for a while.

Malkin last season dealt with a serious left elbow injury that sidelined him for the final month of the regular season and hindered him throughout the playoffs where surgery in the summer was being mulled to fully correct the issue.

“We will know more soon,” Sullivan said this morning of Malkin’s injury.

What the Penguins do know is they’ll likely be getting Olli Maatta and Trevor Daley back before the playoffs, late March/first week of April has been a target date for both, and the initial belief is Ron Hainsey has a 2-3 week injury at the max and he should be back.

Outside of those three, the Penguins don’t know for sure yet on the rest of the field.

— Bryan Rust injured on February 9, will miss his 17th straight game tonight, and the talk around the deadline a few weeks ago was that his return to the lineup would be around 8-10 weeks from the time he was injured. Rust has what’s been described as a tricky injury and the bit of uncertainty with Rust last month is one reason the Penguins kicked some tires on Patrick Eaves at the deadline, and looked very hard at Jannik Hansen, though, Hansen was not a rental.

— Carl Hagelin injured on March 10, is out a “minimum” of four weeks and the Penguins will have a better idea in about two weeks if the injury is around four weeks or closer to six-seven weeks, per sources.

— With the playoffs less than four weeks away, the main thing that matters is Kris Letang’s long-term health and whether he’s going to be there for the start of the post-season and won’t be limited.

Letang has an injury that sources close to the situation say To read this insider news, subscribe to get “Inside Access”!

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