CRANBERRY, Pa. -- The Penguins will be without Evgeni Malkin for quite awhile to start the season.
Ron Hextall announced on Thursday during the Penguins' opening day of training camp that Malkin "is not going to play for at least the first two months" of the season, which would rule him out until at least sometime in December.
Malkin underwent surgery on his right knee on June 4.
Sidney Crosby skated again prior to Thursday's practice, but Hextall said that his status hasn't changed.
"Sid's been skating pretty much every day," Hextall said. "He's not handling the puck, he's one-handing the puck. But everything has gone well. He's obviously been skating hard. He's right around the timeline that we gave there, the minimum six weeks right now is what we expect."
If Malkin goes on long-term injured reserve, that does not provide the Penguins with any long-term salary cap benefits. LTIR relief is temporary, and only benefits the team while the player is on LTIR. Hextall said earlier this month that he would not expect to use that LTIR relief to add any significant players, citing the temporary nature of the relief.
"The problem is if you use it, you got to go back and get cap-compliant when Sid and Geno come back," Hextall said. "So it's not as easy as it looks, that we just sign a guy to a contract for a couple months and then player X comes back or player Y comes back. But that's not the way the system works. We have to become compliant when both players come back, so we can can't add a big dollar player here. Because they're both going to be back."
The LTIR would give the Penguins flexibility to recall players to the main roster, or add a low-cost player like Brian Boyle.
