Following his team's latest loss, Mike Sullivan intimated strongly that change could be coming to his line combinations.
“Quite honestly, they haven’t gotten a lot since they’ve been together," Sullivan said late Saturday night of the scoring chances for Phil Kessel and Derick Brassard after the Penguins' 4-2 loss to the Flyers. "That’s something that the coaching staff has to look at.”
Well, they looked at it and -- if the team's practice Monday at the Lemieux Sports Complex is any indication -- not much has changed. For now.
Nope, Kessel hasn't been reunited with Evgeni Malkin and Brassard hasn't been bumped up to the top line on Sidney Crosby's left wing. Kessel and Brassard remained on the third line — as they have been the last three games — a unit which has been largely invisible, mustering zero points and just one shot.
How much longer Kessel, Brassard and Zach Aston-Reese remain linemates remains to be seen.
"There's always a fine line," Sullivan said Monday following practice at PPG Paints Arena. "We're trying to find combinations that bring success. We're trying to allow combinations to work through the process and we're also trying to evaluate whether it has potential to find traction. When's the right time to split up a line? Or when's the right time to allow guys to stay together and work through things? That's the coach's instinct based on what we see."
Actually, how much longer Brassard will be with the Penguin remains to be seen. As Dejan Kovacevic reported late Saturday night, the Penguins are fed up with Brassard and consider him to be ‘trade material.’
Jim Rutherford told me Monday that he wasn't currently working on any trades but that, of course, is always subject to change.
"Not that I know of," the GM said with a small chuckle. "Not that I know of today."
Brassard has already been traded three times in his 12-year career and is definitely aware that Rutherford could be looking to shake things up even further. Rutherford has dealt Carl Hagelin and now Daniel Sprong, but the Penguins' response has been to win just three of nine games since and now sit at 10-10-5, four points out of a wildcard spot.
"I think this team is capable of winning," Brassard said after practice Monday. "We're aware that .500 is not something we're looking for as teammates, as players. We're pretty sure our GM doesn't want to be managing a .500 team. We know we can be a lot better. We're playing good games, we're just ... I think we're making mistakes that this team in the past wasn't making. I'm just trying to focus on my game. I can't really focus on what he's going to do or how he's going to try and help the team."
In 30 regular-season games with the Penguins, Brassard has scored just five goals with nine assists for 14 points. Since coming off a lower body injury that forced him to miss three weeks, he has one goal and 11 shots in eight games.
The 31-year-old insists that the injury, believed to be a recurrence of the groin injury which hampered him last spring, is not holding him back:
As frustrated as Sullivan has become with his third line, he did say that it's not all on Brassard, possibly taking a bit of a shot at Kessel, who has shown an affinity for playing alongside Malkin and few else.
"It's hard to identity just one guy on a line and say 'He's the reason,'" Sullivan said. "When you look at line combinations, it takes cooperative play to have success because the game's too hard out there. Teams defend hard. It takes cooperative effort for a line to have success both offensively and defensively."
Sullivan added that Brassard had been playing well before his injury: hanging on to pucks and supporting the puck in the offensive zone. Since returning, however, Brassard has been largely a perimeter player, unable or unwilling to get to the high traffic areas.
He's also been used exclusively at center. At the time of his injury, a three-assist game against the Flames on Oct. 25, he was playing left wing on the Crosby line.
At his best, Brassard is a playmaking center and now that he's centering Kessel, an accomplished scorer, and Aston-Reese, a promising youngster, he should be able to produce. He just hasn't found any connection with Kessel.
"There's chemistry," Brassard insisted. "We just have to make plays. It's hard to score in this league 5-on-5. You might have two chances a game, maybe three. You just have to capitalize on it."
The Penguins acquired him from Ottawa to be a third line center, in what they hoped would be a Stanley Cup threepeat. Since then, Brassard has been either injured or ineffective. He's simply proven to be a poor fit after being accustomed to playing in a top-six role in previous stops with the Blue Jackets, Rangers and Senators.
While Brassard's faceoff win percentage (51.5) and ice time (15:45) are commensurate with his career averages, his offensive zone starts are nowhere close to what he'd been getting elsewhere. He is currently at 41.1 percent after being at 58.6 in Columbus and 57.2 in New York. With Crosby and Malkin getting most of the offensive draws, Brassard has to work all 200 feet to generate scoring. Perhaps that best explains his offensive struggles.
"Earlier in (Crosby and Malkin's) career, they would have like Nick Bonino or Jordan Staal or Matt Cullen, those guys doing the defensive zone (draws)," Brassard was saying. "So when you start in the defensive zone, if you're not winning ... you are 15-20 seconds in your own end, expending energy and not spending time in the offensive zone.
"But I was expecting that when I got here. Maybe it takes a little bit off my offense, but it's not about me. I try and play in that role, try and be good in the faceoff dot. I'm not worrying about scoring. Obviously, I want to produce offensively. This team has enough scoring. I'm just trying to do those things like taking defensive zone faceoffs. Last week, I played against (Dallas' Jamie) Benn and against (Buffalo's Jack) Eichel when Sid was hurt. That was a big challenge for me. I thought my Buffalo game was my best this season. I was playing with Horny and Jake. Next game, I went back to my spot and went to do my job."
• Kris Letang was the only player not to take the ice. He was given a maintenance day, according to Sullivan.
• Matt Murray, out since Nov. 16 with a lower body injury, skated on his own prior to the start of practice. That is the first step toward his return.
"It's a big step," Sullivan said. "We'll take each day as it comes, but certainly that's encouraging. He's getting close."
Rutherford told DKPittsburghSports.com on Monday that the hope is that Murray will return in the next week or two.
• Monday morning's practice was held before a few thousand Western Pennsylvania school children. It was part of the Penguins' 11th annual "Open Practice for Kids." The aim of the field trip is to teach students grades 1-5 the importance of "education, teamwork and physical well-being."
• To entertain the kids, the Penguins held a shootout competition to close the practice. In the end, Dominik Simon prevailed over Brassard. Simon has never taken shootouts in the NHL but wouldn't mind the chance.
"We've got great guys who can do it really well, but it's something you've got to keep working on," he said. "It's something I've always liked."
• Toronto is the third-largest city in North America by population but its hockey community is fairly tight knit. It's also the hometown of Jamie Oleksiak (the Beaches) and Wayne Simmonds (Scarborough), the two combatants in Saturday night's first-period fight. Oleksiak, the big defenseman who has carved his place as one of the NHL's most feared fighters, said he knows Simmonds a little and lauded him for giving a good fight.
"Simmonds has definitely earned his respect in the league," he said. "A guy that skilled and still fights the toughest of them, you don't see many guys like that in the league. Kind of cool to see those old school (guys); kind of few players like that. "
• The Penguins used the following lines and pairs in practice:
Guentzel -- Crosby -- Simon
Pearson -- Malkin -- Hornqvist
Aston-Reese -- Brassard -- Kessel
Sheahan -- Grant -- Rust
Dumoulin -- Ruhwedel
Maatta -- Riikola
Johnson -- Oleksiak
Note: Before he was traded, Sprong took some line rushes on the top line in place of Simon and on the second in place of Hornqvist.