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Head coach John Hynes hopes one aspect of last Sunday’s win over Portland doesn’t repeat itself when the Penguins wrap up the regular season with a three-in-three this weekend.
The Penguins beat Portland 3-1 despite playing with five defensemen. With a week full of practices before the weekend, the Penguins were still without Harrison Ruopp and Reid McNeill due to injuries and they lost Scott Harrington and Brian Dumoulin to Pittsburgh.
So could they open the weekend with five defensemen again?
“A lot of times it looks like a dire situation, but there’s not a lot of season-ending injuries in Pittsburgh,” Hynes said. “Guys are going to come back.”
That includes both Pittsburgh and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
Barry Goers has been practicing with a red “no contact” jersey and Hynes hinted he expects him to return this weekend. As the Pittsburgh blueline gets healthy, they likely will send back another blueliner or two as well. As for McNeill, he’s still considered week-to-week.
But the Penguins did make several moves to bolster the depth on the blueline just in case over the last week, with the signings of Scott Shamanski, Sean Escobedo and Danny Federico – all from the ECHL.
Hynes said he’d like to get some of the new guys in the lineup before the regular season ends.
“Depending on the guys we have coming back from injury, we’d like to at least try if we have an opportunity to play a guy we feel can help us, like Shamanski,” Hynes said. “It’s not the worst thing in the world to work with that depth prior to getting into some must-win situations.”
Despite playing with five defensemen on Sunday, Hynes wasn’t rattled by the circumstance. All season Hynes has been stressing team foundations and identity, and the reason why came to fruition on Sunday.
“We really believe in having that foundation and you can plug guys in and play,” Hynes said. “Anyone that’s in the lineup should be able to play. When you hit these things with injuries and call-ups, you don’t falter.”
Still, veteran defenseman Danny Syvret said the blueline couldn’t take all the credit for Sunday’s effort.
“Our forwards made it easy on the back end and hopefully this weekend we have the same performance,” he said.
NOTEBOOK
• Top prospect Kasperi Kapanen didn’t hit the scoresheet over the weekend, but Hynes still liked what he saw. “We like his compete level and he did a lot of things,” Hynes said. “The offense is going to come and go. He was checked a little bit harder, but there was a good consistency level to his game.”
• Jeff Zatkoff turned in a solid performance on Sunday, stopping 29 of 30 shots for the win. Hynes said Zatkof and Matt Murray will both see time in net this weekend. “Jeff was a big factor in us being able to win (on Sunday). We like both guys and they both give us a real good chance to win,” Hynes said.