Tuesday, October 9, 2007

To Penalty Kill, Or Not to Penalty Kill

Last season the Penguins employed basically just four forwards as penalty killers (Talbot-Armstrong, Malone-Staal) and occasionally Jarrko Ruutu if one of them were in the box.

This year Lord Therrien has be open to exploring using the wonder boys (Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby) more on the PK.

I don't like this idea. Crosby took a hard slapshot on the foot Saturday night and missed practice yesterday, though he's expected to be in the lineup tomorrow night for the game against Montreal.

One brilliant thing about keeping Croz and Malkin off the PK is you can unite them for the following shift, when the generally the opposition's best players are on the bench, resting from the powerplay they just had. This allowed for several good chances last season, and surely would again this year.

No comments: