The Pittsburgh Penguins hit the ice for practice on Friday, ahead of their Saturday night matchup against the Nashville Predators, and there wasn't much that looked familiar to the makeup of the lines, per Jonathan Bombulie of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Most notably, captain Sidney Crosby and major offseason addition Phil Kessel are no longer on the top unit together. In Kessel's place, Patric Hornqvist has jumped up to Crosby's right wing. Even Chris Kunitz, Crosby's left-hand man, has been swapped off the top grouping for the recently returned Pascal Dupuis.
"When you change lines, I think everybody gets a little wakeup call," Hornqvist said, via the team's website. Seven games into the 2015-16 NHL season, Hornqvist has just one assist. Unfortunately, he's not the only Penguin whose offensive numbers just aren't where they need to be.
Crosby has one goal and two assists. Kessel has two goals and one assist. Kunitz, on Crosby's left, has no goals and no assists to date. All told, the Penguins have just 11 goals on the year, despite their 3-4 record.
"We'll see how everybody responds and ultimately, I think everybody's role doesn't really change based on who they're playing with," Crosby said. "Everyone knows what they need to do. But sometimes, it takes a little bit of (change) to get everybody going and hopefully, that will be the answer for us."
Getting Dupuis back was big for the team. While he's not a dynamic on-ice presence, he's a calming veteran personality who should help soothe the pressure that has clearly been affecting Crosby to this point. Still, Penguins head coach Mike Johnston would say only that the new lines were possibilities moving forward.
"If you look at the first period last night (against Dallas), we had great chances to take an early lead in the game and we missed them," Johnston said. "Are those chances going to fall for us? Yeah, they will. Do we have to tweak some lines? For sure, we have to look at that. We have to look at what combinations may work well together.
"There's a lot of different players in our lineup up front and, right now, we're not locked in to any lines. We're going to switch them tomorrow night and we may even switch them in-game like we did last night."
