NEW YORK -- The Penguins recalled defenseman Mark Friedman from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton prior to Saturday's 8:08 p.m. game against the Rangers.
Friedman's recall is an emergency recall, which means that not one, but two defensemen must be unavailable to the Penguins tonight.
Emergency recalls can only be made when a team has fewer than 12 forwards, six defensemen or two goaltenders available to them -- they can't be made to give a team an extra player at any position. The Penguins were carrying seven defensemen prior to Thursday's game against the Rangers, with Chad Ruhwedel being the extra. Jeff Petry was injured in that game when he took Tyler Motte's elbow to the face in the first period, and was still being evaluated for an upper-body injury as of Friday's practice. But since the Penguins already had Ruhwedel as an extra, Friedman's emergency recall means that one other defenseman is also unavailable tonight.
Kris Letang did miss Friday's practice, though Mike Sullivan attributed his absence to a "maintenance day" and "managing workloads."
The Penguins didn't have a morning skate on Friday -- in part due to there being no available ice at Madison Square Garden as a result of a 1 p.m. Knicks game -- so there were no clues this morning as to who else is out for the Penguins. Sullivan will hold his pregame media availability at 6 p.m.
Emergency recalls do count toward a team's salary cap -- they aren't free. The Penguins didn't have enough room to recall Friedman without a subsequent move, so Nick Bonino was placed on long-term injured reserve retroactive to March 9 -- the date of his lacerated kidney injury -- to give the Penguins the cap relief on his $1.025 million cap hit. Long-term injured reserve requires a player to be sidelined for 10 games and 24 days (whichever is longest) so Bonino can't return until April 4 at the earliest.
Because Friedman's recall was an emergency recall, it doesn't count toward the Penguins' four standard recalls allowed from the period between the trade deadline and the end of the regular season. The Penguins are down to two standard recalls, having used the first while papering Drew O'Connor down to the AHL on deadline day to maintain his AHL eligibility, and the second to keep Alex Nylander around after Ryan Poehling became healthy on Thursday.
