Bad news today about the injury status of Patric Hornqvist. After absorbing a big open ice hit from Brooks Orpik on Friday night the intitial prognosis was that the Swedish bowling ball was not going to miss any extended time. That has apparently changed. He will join Conor Sheary in being listed as week to week on the injury report.
Even though Hornqvist’s 5v5 point production (1.23) is going through a bit of a down year his power play production (4.85) hasn’t budged from where it was last year. Possession wise Hornqvist continues to be strong. There is nobody in the organization that is going to replicate the style that Hornqvist plays so the team shouldn’t even bother. They should play the best available lineup and in my opinion that includes Daniel Sprong. With Hornqvist and Sheary on the shelf you have to at least try to replace some of the depth scoring. It isn’t fair to place that responsibility at the feet of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Phil Kessel even though they’ve been amazing lately.
These injuries are nowhere close to being on the scale of what transpired a few years back, but losing Sheary and Hornqvist is far less than ideal. Fortunately the Penguins have some depth and can cover it better than some other teams could.
Today Marc-Andre Fleury returned to PPG Paints Arena with his new team.
No shortage of Fleury related items leading up to tomorrow’s game.
Thanks for reading!
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