The Penguins have made several personnel moves ahead of tonight’s rematch with the Mammoth at PPG Paints Arena.
In a shuffle of giant forwards, Elmer Soderblom was placed on IR with an upper-body injury while Justin Brazeau has been activated from IR. The latter was promptly dispatched to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on a conditioning assignment.
In addition, spunky forward Avery Hayes and physical defenseman Chase Pietila were re-assigned to the Baby Pens. Pietila’s demotion indicates that Sam Girard is ready for game action.
Forwards Egor Chinakhov and Ben Kindel also appear set to return.
Here are the anticipated line combinations and defense pairings for tonight’s game:
LINES
Novak-Crosby-Rakell
Chinakhov-Kindel-Malkin
Kuzmenko-Lapierre-Koivunen
Dewar-Lizotte-Robertson
PAIRINGS
Stastney-Karlsson
Girard-Korczak
Carlile-Letang
Forward Rutger McGroarty and blueliner Ilya Solovyov would appear to be the odd-men out.
Hate the fact that Hayes, who played a strong game against Predators, got sent down, but what are you going to do? Until the Pens, or more specifically Kyle Dubas, unloads a couple of forwards, this appears to be Avery’s short-term fate.
I’ll be curious to see how the defense performs with Girard reinserted beside Kaedan Korczak and mistake-prone Declan Carlile dropping to the third pairing beside Kris Letang. In Girard’s absence, the Carlile-Korczak and Solovyov-Letang pairings worked out pretty well.
