Sidney Crosby and Chris Kunitz will suit up for the Pittsburgh Penguins Saturday when they take on the Columbus Blue Jackets in pre-season action, the team announced Friday.
Crosby was held out of the start of training camp for precautionary reasons while he dealt with an unspecified minor injury unrelated to the hand injury that bothered him last season. Kunitz’s injury is also unspecified, but not believed to be serious.
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“Yeah, I feel good. It will be good to get in a game and get back in there. It’s been awhile,” Crosby told reporters Friday. “In practice, I think I’m in as good of shape as I can be. Until you kind of get in games, it’s really hard to get [in game shape]. At this point, I might have played one or two pre-season games by now. But I think ultimately I’ll end up playing the same thing anyways, so I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”
Crosby had 36 goals, 68 assists for a league-leading 104 points in 80 games last season and won his second Hart Memorial Trophy as the NHL’s MVP. Kunitz set career highs in goals with 35 and points with 68 in 78 games last season. The two have developed a solid chemistry playing on the Penguins’ top line together and were teammates for the gold medal-winning Team Canada at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.
In other Penguins news, forward Pascal Dupuis, who is recovering from knee surgery, was recently cleared for contact but won’t suit up Saturday. Beau Bennett was assisted off the ice towards the end of Friday’s practice after falling awkwardly during a drill.
Centre Evgeni Malkin is also injured and did not participate Friday. Penguins head coach Mike Johnston doesn’t believe the Russian star is dealing with a long-term injury.
“He’s not skating or working out right now. I expect that he will be over this next 4-5 days,” Johnston said. “If I believed it was going to be long-term, I’d tell you it was long-term, but I believe it’s not going to be long-term. But it’s still a few days away before he’s going to be able to work out and be on the ice…Geno is going to have a little bit more catchup [when he returns], but we’ve been doing video work with him, so at least he knows how we want to play and what changes there are, what adjustments he has to make.”