The Penguins didn’t have Evgeni Malkin against Connor McDavid’s Edmonton Oilers Wednesday at PPG Paints Arena, but the local hockey club refused to spend time crying over a suspended Russian.
“It’s not my call,” Kris Letang said of the one-game suspension Malkin incurred Tuesday for swinging his stick like a sword at Philadelphia’s Michael Raffl. “So I don’t care.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think, you think or anyone else thinks,” coach Mike Sullivan added. “The league makes its decisions, and we’re going to live by it.”
While Penguins players didn’t want to say much about the suspension — “I have no comment on that,” Patric Hornqvist said — Sidney Crosby did sympathize with Malkin.
They’ve all been there before, Crosby said, in so many words describing Raffl punching Malkin in the back of the head and setting him off.
The lesson here is for Malkin, who now has two of the five match penalties that have been handed out this season, to better keep his cool.
“It’s an emotional game,” Crosby said. “You’re going to do stuff sometimes. Ideally you wouldn’t do anything; you’d skate away.
“I’m sure there’s a lot of guys — myself included — who’ve said that a number of times. It doesn’t always work out that way.”
Without Malkin, Nick Bjugstad centered a second line with Tanner Pearson and Phil Kessel.
Losing Malkin for a game did come at an unfortunate time for him. In a season where Malkin has struggled to find his game, this is now the second time where he’s had progress interrupted.
After he was physically engaged and solid against the Lightning on Jan. 30, Malkin suffered an upper-body injury that night courtesy of a hit from Lightning defenseman Dan Girardi, missing the next five games.
In Philly, Malkin’s line had a positive five-on-five possession number in a game where the Penguins controlled just 43.5 percent of the shot attempts. Kessel, Bjugstad and Malkin led the team in scoring chances, too.
“It’s unfortunate,” Crosby said. “It was a big boost for us to get Geno back in the lineup. You could tell that. It was great to see him feeling good. It’s tough to see that he’s going to be out [Wednesday].”
Aston-Reese returns
Zach Aston-Reese returned to the Penguins’ lineup after a 13-game absence, joining a fourth line with Matt Cullen and Garrett Wilson.
“I’m excited,” Aston-Reese said after morning skate. “I’m back with Cully and Willy. I thought we had a lot of chemistry earlier in the year, playing that grind game.”
When Aston-Reese hurt his hand in a fight with Florida’s Colton Sceviour on Jan. 8 — not a punch; Sceviour landed on it — Aston-Reese was feeling good offensively.
Although he didn’t have a point that night or the previous game, Aston-Reese was coming off a four-game point streak where he scored a pair of goals.
“I wouldn’t say I was at the top of my game, but I was definitely starting to figure it out offensively, how to get some points and things like that,” Aston-Reese said. “Hopefully I didn’t lose too much.”
That will be key, too, on the power play, where Aston-Reese took Dominik Simon’s spot on the second unit. With three goals in his past 33 games, Simon was a healthy scratch.
Top unit back
Speaking of the power play, Sullivan re-assembled the top unit after using two separate ones Monday against the Flyers.
That meant Kessel was back with Crosby, Letang, Hornqvist and Guentzel.
With the Penguins one for 20 on the power play during a nine-game stretch before Wednesday, what was Sullivan’s message in putting the top guys back together?
“To score goals,” said Hornqvist, who entered Wednesday’s game without a point in his past nine.
Coffey talk
Former Penguins defenseman Paul Coffey was back in town because of his role as an Oilers skills and development coach. The last one of his Penguins records, however, has fallen.
Letang knocked that one off in Philly, scoring his 109th career goal. Letang is now the Penguins leader in games played, goals, assists and points by a defenseman in the regular season and playoffs.
Letang also has a huge amount of admiration for Coffey, whom he considers a friend.
“He brought huge things to me, especially early on, having chats about the mental aspect of the game, what it is to play with guys like Geno and Sid,” Letang said. “He had the chance to play with Mario [Lemieux] and [Wayne] Gretzky.
“It’s not always technical. It’s more mindset going into games and coaching.”
Sid vs. McDavid
Funny moment from Crosby’s media scrum Wednesday morning: He was asked about McDavid and how his game has matured since he first broke into the NHL.
“He’s been pretty good since the start. It’s hard to really get better from there,” Crosby said. “If it’s possible, he’s done that. He’s been so consistent and found different ways to produce. Every part of his game is so dangerous. It’s pretty hard to stop him.”
As a rookie, McDavid had 48 points in 45 games despite missing basically three months. The next year, McDavid was the only NHL player to reach triple digits in points, with 100.
Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.
First Published: February 13, 2019, 6:25 p.m.