The Penguins spent time in Monday's practice rotating all healthy seven defensemen in different pairings. Lefties with righties, lefties with lefties, and vice versa.
That little bit of practice proved useful on Tuesday, when the Penguins lost both Marcus Pettersson and Juuso Riikola, two left-handed defensemen, in a 5-4 overtime win over the Capitals.
Mike Sullivan wasn't able to provide an update for either player after the game, saying that both were still being evaluated for upper-body injuries. The Penguins are scheduled to have a day off Wednesday, so we likely won't receive a further update on either player until Thursday's practice.
Pettersson was lost in the second period after this open-ice hit by T.J. Oshie:
Pettersson was slow to get up from the hit and was immediately taken to the dressing room.
"It was a pretty bad hit," Teddy Blueger said. "You hate to see your own teammate get hurt like that. It was tough to see. But I think with the momentum we had at that point in the game, especially on the power play, the guys were pretty fired up to make them pay for it. The power play capitalized."
Oshie was initially assessed a major penalty for the play. A rule added prior to the 2019-20 NHL season requires all plays that result in major penalties to be reviewed by video to either confirm or modify the call. After the review, officials reduced the call to a minor penalty for interference.
It's not clear when Riikola was injured. He finished the second period but was not on the bench to start the third, and didn't return.
The remaining healthy defensemen finished with big minutes as a result. Kris Letang finished with 28:14 in time on ice, with Brian Dumoulin right behind at 27:36 and John Marino at 26:01. Chad Ruhwedel played 17:36.
"The four (defensemen) that we played with in the third period and overtime, I thought they did a terrific job hanging in there and competing," Sullivan said. "That's not an easy task when you're down to that few defensemen in a hard-fought game like tonight was. Those guys did a terrific job staying with it and competing out there."
"I think we just tried to make sure we didn't turn the puck over and allow them to get caught out there too long," Sidney Crosby said of what the forwards did for the remaining defensemen in the final period. "We just managed the puck well, we were aggressive in our end to try to kill plays early and not let them have zone time and wear us down that way. Whether it was getting the puck out of our end or making sure we made smart reads at their blue line, I think those things were probably the biggest that made a difference for us."
With left-handed defensemen Mike Matheson already out "longer-term" with an upper-body injury sustained in Philadelphia, and Cody Ceci being right-handed, if even just one of Pettersson or Riikola aren't ready to play on Friday against the Rangers, it opens the door wide open for left-handed Pierre-Olivier Joseph to make his NHL debut.
The Penguins currently have two defensemen -- Joseph and Kevin Czuczman, both left-handed -- on their taxi squad. Czuczman, 30, is a career minor-leaguer aside from 13 games with the Islanders in 2013-14. He's served well as a leader on Wilkes-Barre's blue line the past three seasons, and was called up to Pittsburgh last season as an extra defenseman but was never put in the lineup for a game.
If one of the taxi squad defensemen need to step in, Joseph is the clear first choice.
Assistant coach Mike Vellucci, who was Joseph's head coach in Wilkes-Barre last season, told me in the offseason that he thought Joseph was ready for a call to the NHL since after last season's Christmas break. And he defended the biggest element of Joseph's game that some fans and members of the media often point to as a weakness: Joseph's strength.
"What impresses us the most is his willingness to listen, to learn, and willingness to put the time in," Vellucci said of Joseph. "I can't say enough about it. One of the conversations I've had with him is that everyone always wants to talk about his weight. To me, some people are never going to have weight. But what he can have is strength. He gets stronger. There are guys who don't weigh a lot who are wiry strong. I told him early on in the season that I really don't want to talk about his weight at all, I'm tired of everyone talking about his weight. Let's talk about his strength. Has that improved? We did midseason testing and his leg strength showed tremendous growth, more than anybody else. That, to me, proves that it didn't matter that he was the same weight as he started, because he got stronger."
Given what Vellucci said about Joseph's growth in that area over the course of last season, coupled with another offseason in the weight room for Joseph since Vellucci and I had that conversation, it's safe to say that Joseph's strength shouldn't be a concern at this point.
