3 Things: Injury Updates and Workflow, Zohorna Practices and More
1. Injury updates and workflow
Winger Brandon Tanev, who has missed the last two games with an upper-body injury suffered on March 18 at New Jersey, did not practice and remains day-to-day.
"We're taking each day as it comes, and we'll see where it goes," head coach Mike Sullivan said.
Forward Jason Zucker, who has missed the last 15 games with a lower-body injury, skated with skills and development coach Ty Hennes this morning.
"He's continuing to make progress," Sullivan said. "He's skating in full equipment and the types of drills that he's doing are advancing as well, so that's encouraging from his standpoint."
Sullivan added that Evgeni Malkin, who is week-to-week with a lower-body injury, is in the process of his rehab and has not gone on the ice yet.
"Geno's status is the same," he said.
With four forwards currently sidelined - Malkin, Zucker, Tanev and Teddy Blueger, who is longer-term with an upper-body injury - the coaching staff is trying to figure out the best combinations that will give them more contributions throughout their lineup along with some balance. So they made some tweaks today, flipping Zach Aston-Reese and Evan Rodrigues.
"If we were to put a guy like Zach up with Jared McCann and Kappy, he brings just a different dimension," Sullivan said. "He's more physical, he's stronger on the wall, I think he brings a heavier game. He can go to the net in the battle areas, so it's just a little bit of a different look with Zach there versus Evan. We made that switch in practice today just to see what it looked like but it's hard to get a real assessment with one practice."
Here is the Pens' workflow…
Guentzel-Crosby-Rust
Aston-Reese-McCann-Kapanen
Rodrigues-Jankowski-Lafferty
Sceviour-Gaudreau-Angello
Dumoulin-Letang
Matheson-Ceci
Pettersson-Marino
Riikola-Ruhwedel
2. Zohorna gets first practice with Pittsburgh
Radim Zohorna mixed in with the fourth line - and rotated with Anthony Angello on the second power-play unit - in his first practice with the NHL club since being recalled to Pittsburgh last week.
"I thought he did a real good job," Sullivan said. "He's got good hockey sense. He has real nice hands. He can make plays. For a guy that's as big as he is, he's a decent playmaker with the puck. I thought the tempo of the practice was high and I thought he did a real good job staying with the tempo."
The 6-foot-6, 233-pound forward earned the opportunity after Sullivan said he played extremely well with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, recording a team-high nine points (3G-6A) in 11 games.
"I am very glad to be here," said Zohorna, who called former Penguin Jaromir Jagr a 'legend.' "It's very nice to be here but I want to play here, I want to make the team."
Zohorna speaks to the media
The 24-year-old is playing in his first professional season in North America after signing with the Penguins as an undrafted free agent on April 29, 2020. Prior to that, he played the last six years in the Czech Republic's top professional league, the Czech Extraliga. He was a two-time league champion with HC Kometa Brno in 2017 and '18.
Both Zohorna and the Penguins have been pleased with how he is adjusting to the style of play thus far.
"I had games in Wilkes-Barre, so right now I think it's pretty good but still not where I want it," he said. "It was an adjustment with the ice. In Europe it's so big and we had a lot of time. The first few games I had a really big problem with the ice because players are so nearby me in the offensive zone. But overall, it's not so bad."
While Zohorna also wants to work on his speed, saying players are faster than him in the corners right now, he also wants to use his size to his advantage.
"It's hard to miss him with that size," Mike Matheson said. "He's a great player obviously with his size and stuff, but his ability to control the puck and skate is pretty high-end as well. I think he could be a great presence on the ice."
3. Intensity high; volume low
The Penguins were back on the ice following a day off on Monday. As Sullivan said, it came at an opportune time, as they finished a rough stretch of five games in seven days with their 2-1 overtime loss to New Jersey on Sunday afternoon.
"Each night, you come out of there with ice packs and bumps and bruises," Matheson said. "So I think it was, like Sully said, a good time for us to recoup a little bit. We've been playing a lot of hockey, and I think it was the first time in a while that we got a day off at home to be with our families and kind of reset a little bit."
Matheson and his wife Emily are expecting their first child, a boy, in June. So they were able to catch up on preparations for their upcoming arrival and took their dog Hank for a long walk so they could take advantage of the beautiful weather, something a lot of Mike's teammates did as well.
"When you're playing a lot of games, you really don't end up spending much time outside," Matheson said. "You go from the hotel to the rink and then back to the hotel; then to the rink for the game and then on a plane to the next hotel and stuff like that. So when you think of it, you're really not outside very much, and so I think that was one thing that a lot of guys tried to do. Just relax and try to get outside, get some fresh air and reset a little bit, recharge the batteries."
While they got some much-needed time to physically and mentally recover, the coaching staff understands that the schedule will continue to be taxing moving forward into Wednesday and Thursday's back-to-back games against Buffalo.
"So we tried to practice with intensity today, but tried to lower the volume," Sullivan said. "So that we can continue to give them give them an opportunity to activate their central nervous system but also play under somewhat game-real conditions. But we tried to keep the volume low so that so that the workload wasn't overly taxing, to give them an opportunity to continue to recover before we go to back-to-back here starting tomorrow."
