CRANBERRY, Pa. -- The Penguins had an encouraging development on the injury front in Monday's practice at the Lemieux Complex.
Bryan Rust, Jake Guentzel and Brian Boyle rejoined their teammates for practice for the first time since they were injured. All three -- along with Evgeni Malkin -- wore white non-contact jerseys during the practice.
Rust has been out with an undisclosed lower-body injury since Nov. 26, when he left the Penguins' game on Long Island during warmups. Guentzel was injured in the game in Seattle on Dec. 6, when he was hit in the right hand with a puck. Boyle first missed practice on Thursday with what Mike Sullivan then called "nagging lower-body stuff," and has been considered day-to-day since then.
Sullivan said that there aren't any changes to the statuses of Rust, Guentzel or Boyle but added, "The fact that they're on the ice with the team is encouraging."
There were no line rushes in the practice. Malkin, Guentzel, and Rust all sat out during the special teams work, though Boyle worked with the penalty-kill against both the first and second power play units.
Even though the injured players still seem a ways away from returning, their presence at practice again still provided a boost for the team.
"It's nice to see Jake smiling and laughing out there," Zach Aston-Reese said. "And Rusty, it's good to see those guys back. Anytime a guy goes down, it sucks. But when it's a top-six guy like Rusty or Guentzy, it sucks even more. So it's nice to have them back. We're looking forward to them coming back and being healthy."
Tristan Jarry called their return to practice "huge."
"It's exciting to have them out there," he said. "Just to have those guys, knowing that they're pretty close to coming back, I think that gives our team just a little bit of extra energy. It'll be great when they do come back."
MORE FROM PRACTICE
• Tuesday's game against the Devils has been postponed due to COVID issues affecting the Devils. More on that here.
• Jason Zucker missed practice with what Sullivan called a "maintenance day." It was Zucker's fourth maintenance day this month, also having missed practices this past Saturday, as well as Dec. 8 and 9.
• Wilkes-Barre/Scranton had more players -- Radim Zohorna, Nathan Legare, Felix Robert and Niclas Almari -- enter the COVID protocol in the last week. Because of that, Sullivan said that he believes they'd be "hesitant" to call anyone up at this point, despite the team in Pittsburgh having no extra healthy forwards. Though it's worth noting that Anthony Angello was healthy scratched for Wilkes-Barre on Saturday as a precaution, and was also held out of practice there Monday. Something to keep an eye on.
• Skills coach Ty Hennes remains in COVID protocol, though Sullivan said he expects Hennes to be able to come out of protocol on either Tuesday or Wednesday. Sullivan said Hennes experienced mild symptoms.
• The first power play was Kris Letang, Sidney Crosby, Jeff Carter, Evan Rodrigues and Danton Heinen, with Heinen bumped up to the top unit in Zucker's absence, rather than Kasperi Kapanen like we saw in Saturday's practice.
• The second power play was John Marino, Mike Matheson, Drew O'Connor, Dominik Simon and Kapanen.
• Players were definitely in a good mood, evidenced by lots of exaggerated celebrations throughout practice. At one point, Letang knocked down Crosby in a drill, and kept him pinned down, laughing. When both players got up, Letang flexed his arms at Crosby. I also noticed Rodrigues making Malkin crack up between seemingly every other drill. I'd love to know what Rodrigues was saying to keep Malkin entertained that much. Malkin was also having some fun by himself at center ice during the power play work. He wasn't participating, so he was stickhandling through the feet of Sullivan, Todd Reirden and Andy Chiodo while they observed the drills.
• Aston-Reese has been credited with 104 hits this season, ranking fourth in the NHL and first on the Penguins by a 43-hit margin.
"(Brandon Tanev) is gone, so (the league officials) are just giving them all to me," Aston-Reese joked. "I'm just jumping into the glass and making it look like I hit somebody. (laughs). No, I mean, I'm not scoring right now. And that's kind of been the case the whole year, obviously with one goal. So that's kind of the way I have to make an impact and and keep my spot in the lineup, is just playing physical and hitting guys. So that's what I'm sticking to until the goals start coming at least."
Part of the reason for the increase in his hit totals is just feeling more comfortable after having his shoulder surgically repaired.
"It's been night and day, being able to play physical," he said. "That was something that I know going into the bubble a couple years ago, it was like, I just remember I would get in a scrum and crosscheck somebody, and my shoulder would slip out. It was just a really tough mental block that you know at some point, your shoulder just going to pop out. Not having to worry about that is really nice."
• A decision is expected this week on whether the NHL will allow its players and staff to participate in the Beijing Olympics. Sullivan, the head coach of Team USA, is preparing as if the NHL will still go.
"We're doing everything within our power as a coaching staff and a management team to prepare the U.S. team to try to win a gold medal," he said. "And until people tell us otherwise, that's the course of action we're going to take. That's the approach we've had."
• In other Olympics-related news, the Czech Ice Hockey Association on Monday put out a press release requesting that the name "Czechia" (CHEK-ee-ah) be used to refer to the national team, replacing "the Czech Republic." The word "Czechs" is still to be used as the plural/possessive word referring to the players. An example in a sentence: Dominik Simon centered Czechia's first line in the 2019 World Championship, scoring four goals and eight assists in 10 games to finish No. 3 in scoring among Czech players.