Penguins Regrouping During Final Stretch Before Break

The Penguins skated at UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex on Wednesday after a travel day on Tuesday following a pair of tough road losses to Vegas and Arizona.

When evaluating the trip, Sidney Crosby said they had one bad period against the Golden Knights, who rallied in the third with three unanswered goals to win 3-2, and the game against the Coyotes turned on a Pittsburgh own goal when Kris Letang’s attempted pass to Evgeni Malkin during a delayed penalty call ended up in the empty net.

“Obviously it's a big swing, kind of a fluky play… go from getting a power play to get back in the game to down two. That happens sometimes,” Crosby said. “But we got a couple of days here to get some good practices and try to have a good couple of games before the bye week… we’ve got a chance to get back in the mix here with the wild card spots. So, we got to grab points.”

The coaching staff tweaked the top-nine forward group this morning, as the Penguins look to get back on track before hosting Florida on Friday and Montreal on Saturday.

“We're evaluating all of our lines daily, and we make adjustments accordingly based on how we think lines are performing or how players are performing,” Head Coach Mike Sullivan said. “So, sometimes we adjust during the game if we don't like what we see. If certain players aren't going or other players are playing, we're going to move them up. That's happened most recently in the last handful of games.”

Here's the workflow:

Jake Guentzel-Sidney Crosby-Bryan Rust

Drew O’Connor-Evgeni Malkin-Colin White

Rickard Rakell-Lars Eller-Valtteri Puustinen

Jansen Harkins-Noel Acciari-Jeff Carter

Rust, who’s got one goal in nine games since returning from an injury that sidelined him for nearly a month, should get a boost moving into a familiar role on the top line alongside the captain. He scored in Monday’s game to bring his season total to 27 tallies in just 44 games.

“He’s been incredible this year,” Rust said. “He’s been leading in every sense off the ice, on the ice, he’s been scoring a whole heck of a lot of goals for us. Making plays at both ends of the ice. He’s the leader of the shop right now, and we all just have to follow through a bit more.”

White got a promotion, with Sullivan saying they feel like the 26-year-old forward’s defensive conscience and awareness away from the puck are the biggest assets he could bring to that line.

“Anytime you can play with Geno or a guy like that, it’s pretty awesome. It's just sticking to my game and playing simple and working hard every game,” White said.

The Penguins have liked White’s play since he got recalled from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League, where the 2015 first-round pick spent the first half of the year after signing a one-year deal following a trip to the Stanley Cup Final with Florida.

“This is a great opportunity, and you can’t think too much of it. I just have to play my same game and good things will come from that,” he said. “Playing with confidence, I think that's something we have to get back to – and just having fun doing it, too. That's a big key for me.”

Regarding the third line, many players have rotated in on Eller’s wings for different reasons, with Sullivan calling the cerebral veteran center the ‘stabilizing force’ and someone who’s played ‘extremely well.’

Rakell’s approach to playing in that sort of role versus the top-six one he is accustomed to is focused on trying to elevate his game to the next level and trying to take charge a little bit more.

When Rakell first returned from a long-term injury on Dec. 18, he focused on keeping his game simple, as the five-time 20-goal scorer hadn’t found the back of the net in the first 17 games of the year.

That mindset served him well for a while, but now, Rakell feels like it may be taking the stick out of his hands a bit.

“I think maybe that could be something good for me to get more comfortable with the puck, and try to use my skills a little bit more, try to be more of a threat. I think that's gonna be my mindset if we move forward like this,” Rakell said.

The Penguins have one more day of practice before returning to game action, and time will tell what the configurations will be that night. But in the meantime, the Penguins’ focus is on staying in the moment and controlling what they can, as much as they can.

“That's what we did today, we went on the ice, we practiced hard,” Sullivan said. “We're trying to get better in certain areas. We're going to try to get better each and every day, and then we're going to try to execute on that game plan when the puck drops.”