The Penguins' defense corps, depleted by injury just a week ago, now has a different problem: Too many healthy players.
It's not a bad problem for Mike Sullivan.
Brian Dumoulin should be back in the Penguins lineup tonight, and Chad Ruwhedel has a chance. Officially, both players are game-time decisions, but that could leave Jamie Oleksiak out of the top six who will face the Bruins tonight.
(Update: Oleksiak remained in the lineup as Ian Cole was made a healthy scratch for the fist time in seven games.)
The defense pairs Sullivan employed for Sunday's morning skate at PPG Paints Arena had Dumoulin reunited with Kris Letang, Olli Maatta with Matt Hunwick and Cole with Justin Schultz. If that holds up, Oleksiak will be a healthy scratch for the first time since being acquired from Dallas on Dec. 19.
The decision to sit Oleksiak would be a numbers game, true, but also a reflection of his decision-making with the puck. The 6-7, 255-pound blueliner has one goal in eight games and is a minus-1. On the season, which includes 21 games in Dallas, he's underperformed his team's shot percent ratio (Corsi relative) by about 5 percent.
"I think when (Oleksiak) keeps the game simple and takes what the game gives him and doesn't force things, I think that's when Jamie's at his best. All of our defensemen, for that matter," Sullivan said. "We have those discussions daily with our defense corps. We're looking for smart, efficient, calculated decisions back there. When we play that way, I think we're hard to play against because we don't turn the puck over as much. That's what we're asking all our defensemen to do, and Jamie's no different."
Dumoulin returns after missing the last two games with a concussion. He was struck in the top of the head by a puck during the Jan. 2 win at Philadelphia.
All things considered, Dumoulin said he'd rather take a puck to the head than the jaw, which he did last year, forcing him to miss a month.
"Just felt pressure in my head, felt a little out of it," Dumoulin said. "The doctors and training staff did a good job. Went back in (the dressing room) and took my time with it."
Ruhwedel has missed the last five games after suffering an upper body injury Dec. 29 vs. the Blue Jackets. He had been skating on his own the last few days but Sunday was his first full practice.
"You never want to be out of the lineup," he said. "Not being around the guys, especially when you're injured. You're just on your own working out, skating, and trying to get back into game shape and that's not as fun as being around the guys all the time."
With the glut of defensemen, Frank Corrado was reassigned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton after clearing waivers on Sunday. Corrado appeared in two games -- at Carolina and Detroit -- during his most recent call-up.