The NHL has released the schedule for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Montreal Canadiens. To nobody’s surprise a Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin team playing the fabled Montreal franchise will get the prime time slots at 8PM.

A couple of seasoned veterans will square off when Sidney Crosby and the @penguins take on Shea Weber and the @CanadiensMTL. Who has the edge? #StanleyCup#NHLStats: https://t.co/PCMwRny0CA pic.twitter.com/FwNoWc5Pj5

— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) July 14, 2020

If both teams win a game Sidney Crosby will play an NHL game for the first and only time on his birthday for Game 4. I don’t even want to think of all the superstitious things that would go into that day for him.


A few days back the Penguins have officially listed their extended roster for the NHL’s return to play plan.

Squad goals 💪 pic.twitter.com/LYuInWE3aG

— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) July 12, 2020

No big surprises. We have known the main 20 skaters for a long time and there is no change there. Sam Poulin and Pierre-Olivier Joseph being on the list is a great perk for those players. I don’t foresee any game action, but it doesn’t matter. If things go well and the games get played it will be a great experience for Poulin and Joseph being around the NHL team during a playoff run. There are no negatives for doing this and I kind of wish they added Nate Legare for the same reasons. If the Penguins find themselves dropping players left and right and need to use players like Sam Lafferty, Anthony Angello, Sam Militec, Adam Johnson, and Philip Varone, things aren’t going well for Pittsburgh or COVID is running wild and the games shouldn’t be played anyways. Here are the main 13 forwards and 8 defense:

Zucker-Crosby-Sheary
Guentzel-Malkin-Rust
Marleau-McCann-Hornqvist
Tanev-Blueger-Aston-Reese
Rodrigues

Dumoulin-Letang
Pettersson-Marino
Johnson-Schultz
Riikola-Ruhwedel

Zach Trotman is a minor depth player and he will not be available according to Jim Rutherford. No other information about it has been released.

The power play got in some reps today

Penguins are finally doing power play work:

• Crosby down low
• Malkin right wing half wall
• McCann left point/left wing wall
• Letang center point
• Guentzel net front

— Josh Yohe (@JoshYohe_PGH) July 15, 2020

The personnel looks good for four out of the five spots. The wild card will be McCann on the left side. The Penguins still don’t have an answer for Phil Kessel’s absence with the man advantage. The Penguins are currently rotating Letang and Schultz through the top unit, but I would rather use both of them on unit one to have a right handed player on the left side instead of McCann.

Thanks for reading!

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