Pens' Rust Out a While

The injury concerns in Pittsburgh appear to be mounting at a horrifying rate, as we can now add Bryan Rust's name to the list of injured players and it doesn't sound very good.  Rust was hurt on Tuesday night in the game against the Blue Jackets, playing less than five minutes in the game before leaving with a lower-body injury.  The coaching staff gave an update today, but a vague one, at best, saying that this will be a longer-term issue.  Nothing exact, but nothing really positive either.

Rust has been scoring at a reasonable rate this season, half a point per game, to be exact.  He has 17 goals and 31 points in 62 games this year with the Penguins, which is good enough for 199th overall, in the middle of play tonight.  That's 140th among all forwards, well within range of being pool worthy by the end of the season, but it's just a shame he won't be able to maintain those kind of rankings on the injured list.

Stacey C. certainly feels that pain, as his 17th place team is having a decent week already, but a huge loss to his forward group for an indefinite period of time is a big dark cloud looming over.  His team is only 16 points out of the equator and that's a pretty good group, which won't need many points to really start moving up.  Here's hoping that this injury doesn't last too long.