Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Pens to Miss Malkin

The word out of Pittsburgh is that they will be without Evgeni Malkin in their next game on Thursday night, when they take on the Devils in New Jersey.  Malkin is suffering from an undisclosed injury and there is no word as to how long the Russian superstar will be out of action, but for now we'll call him day-to-day.

I would go so far as to speculate that he might have been dealing with a nagging injury and now he is working towards getting himself back to 100% during the mid-point of the season, hoping for a long playoff run in April.

Malkin has not had a good season to date, as the former Art Ross Trophy winner only has 37 points (15 goals and 22 assists) in 42 games with the Penguins, only good enough for 59th in the league in pool scoring, well down from the 30th position he finished with in 2010.  The hope will be that Malkin can get back into the line-up quickly and return at a high level, trying to get back to an expected scoring level.

ImplicationsMalkin belongs to Leon G. in the draft this year, helping to scratch and claw his way back up to the money in 2011, but Leon is finding himself falling further and further behind of late.  With action already underway, Leon was 30 points out of the money at the time of this post, which isn't out of the question for his team to overcome, but he'll need Malkin to return to form quickly.

Link to the Injury/News Page

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