The Penguins placed right winger Bryan Rust on injured reserve Tuesday due to his lower-body injury, according to the NHL’s media site. They haven’t made a corresponding transaction yet, but with an open roster spot, they could make a recall ahead of tomorrow’s game against the Ducks. Rust’s IR placement is retroactive to Oct. 26, so he won’t be eligible to return until Nov. 2, but he will likely miss more time than that after being labeled week-to-week yesterday.
Rust already missed yesterday’s 5-3 loss to the Wild and has now been officially ruled out for tomorrow’s game. He left Saturday’s loss to the Canucks after getting awkwardly tangled up with Vancouver winger Nils Höglander and did not return. His absence caused Pens head coach Mike Sullivan to reshape his top line completely, bumping up Evgeni Malkin to play left wing alongside Sidney Crosby at even strength and promoting Rickard Rakell from second-line duties.
In eight games this season, the veteran Rust has scored three goals and added an assist for four points. He’s sitting on uncharacteristically poor possession metrics, logging a career-low 46.3 CF% and 41.0 xGF%. He also missed the first two games of the season with a different lower-body injury.
With Rust on the shelf for the next little while, the Penguins will rely even more heavily on that new-look top line to turn things around defensively. Primarily, they’ve performed up to expectations offensively or outperformed them entirely. Malkin has turned back the clock with 14 points in 11 games, while Rakell leads the team in goals with six. Crosby has been underwhelming with just one goal but has added nine assists for 10 points in 11 games. But the Penguins are allowing a league-worst 4.27 goals per game. While suspect goaltending shoulders some blame, Pittsburgh has also controlled just 38.2% of expected goals when their usual top line of Crosby, Rust and Anthony Beauvillier are on the ice together, per MoneyPuck. Crosby has never logged an expected goal share under 50% since the stat’s been tracked – marking a sharp drop-off in his defensive effectiveness, at least in the early going this season.
The 32-year-old Rust is in the third season of a six-year, $30.75MM contract that runs through his age-35 season. His offensive performance has been up and down over its beginning, posting an underwhelming 46 points in 81 games in 2022-23, but he rebounded last season with 28 goals and 56 points in only 62 appearances.
The forwards have actually been OK, the goaltending is bad, but no one is coming to save us (MAF trade?) there, so…
The improvement has to come from the clown show D corps.
Letang stays. Graves is untradeable.
Trade Grzelecyskskyk for a mid pick. Trade Pettersson for a high pick. Trade St. Ivany to a cap strapped team (EDM?) for a surprisingly decent pick.
Then call up Pickering whether he is ready or not and then become a dumping ground for two bad D contracts plus picks.
Cross your fingers the new mix of D happens to gel. If not, you’ve salvaged assets.
SCRATCH Erik Karlsson for multiple games. Make him sit and watch. “He’s a future HOF’er, he has pride…” F that and F him, he’s not playing with any. Sit him. Hurt his pride. It will either fix him or break him. Either is fine. The status quo is not.