COLUMBUS, Ohio. -- Zach Aston-Reese joined his teammates for practice Wednesday for the first time since he suffered a lower-body injury on Feb. 16
Aston-Reese, who has been skating on his own for the past several days, was a full participant with contact for the practice.
"It feels good," Aston-Reese said of being back on the ice with the team. "I know this feeling all too well. It's almost like you've being imprisoned a little bit, kind of isolated from everybody. It's nice to be back, it's been pretty lonely."
Aston-Reese was given the "week-to-week" designation back on Feb. 18, and seems to be ahead of schedule. He said after Wednesday's practice that he didn't expect to be this far along in his recovery this soon, and that he's taking it "day-by-day" now.
Whenever Aston-Reese is ready to return, he's confident that he'll be able to return to form fairly quickly.
"It's a little different from last year's injury," he said. "I feel like I got on the ice a lot quicker this time. I've been working with (skills coach) Ty (Hennes) and with (strength and conditioning coach Alex Trinca) in the weight room and we've been hitting it pretty hard. I felt good today and this whole week skating with Ty. As much as it sucks it's also pretty nice because I get to work on different parts of my game. I spent a lot of time working on my skating and kind of refining some things."
MORE FROM PRACTICE
• John Marino was absent from practice. Mike Sullivan said Marino had a maintenance day.
• There were no line rushes.
• The top power play was Justin Schultz, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jason Zucker, and Patric Hornqvist.
• The second power play was Marcus Pettersson, Kris Letang, Patrick Marleau, Jared McCann, and Bryan Rust.
• The top penalty kill was Teddy Blueger, Brandon Tanev, Brian Dumoulin, and Chad Ruhwedel.
• The second penalty kill was Juuso Riikola, Jack Johnson, Sam Lafferty, and Aston-Reese.
• Before practice, McCann and Hornqvist sat on the bench competing to see who could toss a puck closer to center ice. With nobody getting near the center dot, Hornqvist yelled, laughed, then tossed the rest of the bucket onto the ice.
• McCann took a spill during a drill in practice, I believe he stepped on a puck. He was fine and laughed about it, everyone who saw it laughed, and Evan Rodrigues, watching from the bench, used his stick to act like he was a sniper taking shots at McCann.
•With media barred from the locker rooms due to coronavirus concerns, players were made available by request in a separate area. Players stood at tables outside the locker room while media stayed behind a line of tape about six feet back from the tables:
Players seemed to be amused by the setup. Schultz came to a table first, looked around, and said, "This is weird." Johnson got to his table while Letang was already talking, so Johnson had to walk through the media. He joked that he would just hold his breath. Aston-Reese got behind his table, (fake?) coughed into his arm, then gasped and looked at the media with a face like he just got busted, then laughed at himself.
