The beginning of the 2024-25 Pittsburgh Penguins season is just 11 days away, but it may be starting without one of the team’s best players.
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Questions have emerged regarding the status of top defenseman Erik Karlsson, who has been labeled as day-to-day with an upper-body injury since the onset of training camp. In the earlygoing, he was skating on his own before camp ensued, but over the last three practice days, he did not take the ice beforehand.
Although he did not have any further news to report on Thursday after training camp, head coach Mike Sullivan did offer a bit more Saturday morning, announcing that Karlsson would not skate this weekend.
Mike Sullivan on Erik Karlsson, who has yet to skate with the team during camp due to an upper-body injury:
“He’s scheduled to be off the ice this weekend and then we’ll go from there. That’s just part of the rehab process and where he’s at right now.”
— Pens Inside Scoop (@PensInsideScoop) September 28, 2024
For most of training camp, right-side defenseman Jack St. Ivany had been paired with left-side defenseman Ryan Graves, seemingly drawing up Pittsburgh’s bottom-pairing for the start of the season. Defenseman Sebastian Aho was, presumably, acting as a “placeholder” for Karlsson alongside Marcus Pettersson in the top-four.
That is, until Thursday’s camp – when St. Ivany was bumped up to the top-four with Pettersson, leaving Graves on the bottom-pairing with Aho. Coincidentally, Thursday was also the first day that Karlsson did not skate before camp began.
At the very least, this is mildly concerning. With the nature of NHL injury reporting, there’s not really any way of knowing what is ailing Karlsson until any official announcement is released by the team.
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However, on a surface level, it seems as though the team was prepared to have Karlsson ready for the season until he hit some sort of snag prior to Thursday morning. At that point, pairings got shifted, Karlsson stopped skating, and there has not been any sign of progress since.
If the Penguins begin the season without Karlsson, it leaves a massive hole on their right side. St. Ivany was the only real right defense option left on the roster, and while young and promising, he’s hardly a top-four option at this point. Aho can slot on the right side, but he’s likely a sixth or seventh defenseman at best.
In addition, it leads to questions over how the Penguins will choose to handle Karlsson’s absence, if he’s indeed going to be out long-term. It would, perhaps, open the door to some kind of trade for a right-side defenseman, considering the fact that the Penguins have few options after the release of Nikolai Knyzhov from his PTO contract on Friday.
In addition, the Penguins – hypothetically – appeared poised to carry 14 forwards and seven defensemen, leaving an extra slot for a young prospect like Rutger McGroarty or Vasily Ponomarev to have a shot at cracking the NHL roster.
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But if Karlsson is out, the Penguins will likely want to have options on the blue line. This would make way for Aho, Ryan Shea, John Ludvig, and St. Ivany all to remain on the roster, with the Penguins carrying 13 forwards and eight defensemen, leaving no space for any wiggle room with forwards.
All in all, this has the potential to be a pretty compromising situation for the Penguins. Karlsson was the top producer on the blue line last season, registering 11 goals and 56 points in 82 games. Many were hoping for a bit of an offensive uptick from Karlsson this season, as well as seeing him play a more active role in improving the power play, which has arguably cost them a playoff spot for two consecutive seasons.
Karlsson’s presence also helps ease the load of fellow top-four right defenseman Kris Letang, whose grueling minutes were alleviated by a split with Karlsson last season. With both defensemen in the fold, Pittsburgh has one of the better top-four right sides in the league.
It will be interesting to see how this situation progresses over the next week. The Penguins head to Detroit tonight to kick off a back-to-back preseason slate, which concludes when they face off against the Ottawa Senators at the Elliot Lake Centennial Arena for Kraft Hockeyville in Sudbury on Sunday.
They will return to training camp on Monday, and hopefully, more information about Karlsson’s status will be known then.
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