CRANBERRY, Pa. -- When Evgeni Malkin underwent knee surgery in June, the Penguins didn't announce any sort of expected timeframe for his return at the time, saying that they'd have a better idea of his prognosis when training camp begins.
Malkin was evaluated upon returning to Pittsburgh, and Ron Hextall announced during Thursday's opening day of training camp that Malkin would miss at least the first two months of the regular season.
That would have Malkin returning sometime in December at the earliest.
Sidney Crosby is expected to be sidelined for six weeks after undergoing wrist surgery, a timeline that hasn't changed despite skating in Cranberry the last several days.
"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."
That leaves the Penguins' center depth chart heading into the season as:
1. Jeff Carter
2. Teddy Blueger
3. ????
4. ????
For the openings in the bottom six, the Penguins certainly have a number of options from which to choose.
Brian Boyle, attending camp on a tryout contract, centered a line with Sam Poulin and Bryan Rust in practice. Radim Zohorna, who played center in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton last season and in the Czech Republic before that, centered Jason Zucker and Kasperi Kapanen on Thursday. Evan Rodrigues worked at center, as did Michael Chaput, who spent last season primarily on the Coyotes' taxi squad. Dominik Simon, Filip Hallander, Poulin, Anthony Angello and Sam Lafferty all have relatively recent experience playing center.
"Whenever players go down from an injury standpoint, it's going to provide opportunity for others and others need to step up, they got to take advantage of it," Mike Sullivan said Thursday. "That's the nature of pro sports. We've got some young guys that we're excited about that have showed glimpses of pretty solid hockey, and we'll see which guys can step up and contribute to help us win games."
Sullivan named Zohorna specifically as one of those young players, calling him a "real good player" with "good offensive instincts."
The responsibilities of filling in for Crosby and Malkin don't just fall on the shoulders of those centers who will take the spots in the lineup, but on the entire lineup.
"We've got to do it by committee," Jake Guentzel said. "I mean, two superstar players. But I think we know we have the players to do it. Guys are going to step up. So I think we're all excited for the opportunity, because people might be able to play in different spots they might not be able to. So for us, we're just excited to get going."
Carter, who turns 37 in January, is the clear No. 1 option for first-line center to start the season. He joined the Penguins last season in a third-line center role, and was bumped up to the second line in Malkin's absence. He found success in the center position, after playing primarily wing in his last few years in Los Angeles, and scored nine goals and two assists in his 14 regular-season games in Pittsburgh. He figures that he hasn't been a first-line center since his brief stint in Columbus, or his time in Philadelphia before that, citing the evolving nature as his role as he's gotten older.
"I mean, I'm not gonna replace (Crosby and Malkin)," he said with a laugh. "I think it's going to have to be throughout the lineup. I'll do my part to alleviate some of that pressure. But we're going to need it from everybody. You know, it's the two best players on the team. So it's going to be a big task for everybody. But I think it's going to be fun."
MORE FROM TRAINING CAMP
• The Penguins have just one player who isn't fully vaccinated, but he is expected to be fully vaccinated in the coming weeks. More on that here.
• Filip Hallander left practice early and missed the scrimmage with what Sullivan called a "maintenance day." Now, it's officially hockey season.
• The training camp roster was split into three teams, and the teams used the following lines and pairings:
Team 1:
Jake Guentzel - Jeff Carter- Danton Heinen
Sam Poulin - Brian Boyle - Bryan Rust
Kasper Bjorkqvist - Lukas Svejkovsky - Kyle Olson
Mike Matheson - Will Reilly
Matt Bartkowski - Chad Ruhwedel
Isaac Belliveau - Mark Friedman
(Chris Merisier-Ortiz rotating in)
Team 2:
Jason Zucker - Radim Zohorna - Kasperi Kapanen
Nathan Legare - Evan Rodrigues - Dominik Simon
Justin Almeida - Jordy Bellerive - Sam Lafferty
Cam Lee - Brian Dumoulin
Juuso Riikola - John Marino
Niclas Almari - Mitch Reinke
Team 3:
Zach Aston-Reese - Teddy Blueger - Brock McGinn
Drew O'Connor - Michael Chaput - Valtteri Puustinen
Anthony Angello - Felix Robert - Jan Drozg
(Sam Houde - Josh Williams working as set of two)
P.O Joseph - Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson - Taylor Fedun
Chris Bigras - Josh Maniscalco
(Ryan McCleary rotating in)
Among those forward combinations, some notable takeaways are Brock McGinn skating in Brandon Tanev's old spot with Blueger and Zach Aston-Reese, and Zohorna and Rodrigues playing center.
It's still too early to read too far into those combinations, though, as Sullivan explained.
"We're trying to surround some of the young players with some of our veteran guys to give them an opportunity to be successful," Sullivan said of constructing lines in training camp. "We're also trying to give our our veteran guys an opportunity to play with somebody that gives them an opportunity. We're trying to strike that balance of finding competitive teams, we want to create a competitive environment. That's what I told the players in our opening meeting. And these intra-squads are the first part of it. As you can see with the line combinations that are out there right now, I would anticipate those changing throughout the course of training camp as we get closer to a semblance of our roster."
• Team 1 and Team 2 scrimmaged in the middle of practice. Highlights included Poulin picking up Boyle's rebound for a goal on Alex D'Orio, and Kapanen roofing a puck past Casey DeSmith's shoulder on a penalty shot.
• Tristan Jarry wore his new black pads, something that caused a bit of a stir online with people debating whether white is the ideal color for goalie pads, because of the pads blending in with the ice from the shooter's point of view. I asked Jarry about that, and he didn't put too much weight into that idea.
"I don't think color makes a huge difference," he said. "It's just personal preference at this point. You see around the league, guys are doing red pads. Fleury did a brown set. There's lots of guys that wear black. I think it's just personal preference this year, I thought I'd change it up."
• In other goalie pad news, Filip Lindberg's pads are all white. D'Orio debuted his mostly-white pads with a black and gold diamond pattern in the middle. Louis Domingue is still using his old Flames set and helmet.
• Jarry called working with Andy Chiodo "a good step forward."
"He has some new philosophies," he said. "I think it will really help my game."
• Kris Letang traded his man bun for a low-maintenance shorter cut, a decision he addressed when he spoke after Day 1.
"Why did I cut my hair? I don't know, I needed to change it up," he said. "Maybe I was not really good at keeping it without the knot. And so I think it's more simple like that."
• Blueger is set to play in his first Olympic games this season after he captained Latvia to a tournament win in the Olympic qualifiers, which were held in Latvia last month.
"That was awesome," he told me of the experience. "It was good to have the fans. The World Championship in 2006 was like my first vivid memory of the national team. To be able to play for the hometown fans, we have some of the best fans in the world there. It was special to see how much it meant to everyone to go to the Olympics. We're all very much looking forward to the games."
• I asked Boyle what specific things he was able to do to keep in shape over the last year when he wasn't playing for a team.
"Just taking different drills that I've done in the past, different drills when I've been injured, and had on the recovery process trying to get back into game shape," he said. "I've been playing a lot of years so I've picked up a few things along the way. And funny enough, a lot of them are some of the drills Sully still does that we did with Torts back in New York. Just challenging tough things, tough drills. I had a team in Foxborough of trainers that I've been going to for a long time that have helped quite a bit."
With the drills Boyle was doing in his training, he said that it wasn't a big adjustment when he got back into games with Team USA at the World Championship in the spring.
"Being on the bigger ice helped too, because it took a little longer for plays to develop," he added. "For me, I could read them a little quicker so I thought that helps. And as great of an experience that was, it wasn't the NHL so I felt like I was able to adjust quick."
Dave Molinari has more on Boyle here.
