The news regarding Sidney Crosby and the injury he sustained at the Olympics finally filtered out this morning. As anticipated, it ain’t good.
Sid’s expected to miss a minimum of four weeks with a lower-body injury.
Yikes.
Translated to the Penguins’ remaining schedule, already one of the toughest in the league, that encompasses our next 15 games.
Double yikes.
I opined in a previous article the Pens might be able to survive and even thrive for a brief stretch without their captain. But a month sans arguably the greatest all-around player ever to lace on a pair of skates is pushing it to the limits…beyond.
For the time being, it appears coach Dan Muse will keep his other three forward lines intact, while shifting Rickard Rakell to Sid’s center spot and plugging the gap on wing with spirited minor-league sensation Avery Hayes.
One does have to wonder if Sid’s injury will alter Kyle Dubas’s approach at the deadline. Maybe it already has. PP colleague Other Rick offered that perhaps our POHO/GM plays it closer to the vest and doesn’t pull the trigger on yesterday’s Brett Kulak–Samuel Girard deal if Sid were healthy.
Perhaps the next five games leading up to the March 6 deadline will help decide Dubas’s course, to say nothing of the Pens’ fate.
A few rays of hope amid the gloom. Thanks to our outstanding forward depth, if any team is built to survive the absence of their leading scorer, it’s this bunch. Too, they’ve already exhibited a gritty, next-man-up mentality while dealing with injuries to Rakell, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Bryan Rust, Justin Brazeau and Blake Lizotte, to name a few.
A reminder that Geno missed the final 15 games (there’s that number again) of the 2015-16 season with an arm injury. Then-coach Mike Sullivan juggled his lines and the newly formed HBK Line went on a tear. Propelling the Pens to a 13-2 finish and onto a Stanley Cup.
It happened before.
It could happen again.
As Jesus once said to Jairus, a synagogue leader whose daughter was dying, “Don’t be afraid; only believe.”
Shortly before He healed her.