Jonathan Bombulie stories, Page 31

Pittsburgh Penguins winger Bryan Rust hasn’t noticed teammates giving him the cold shoulder in the locker room or avoiding sitting next to him on the team bus, but it would be easy to see why they might. Rust’s closest friends have been finding their way off the roster as of...

Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby does literally hundreds of interviews during the course of any given season, politely answering thousands of questions. After Monday’s practice in Cranberry, he finally found a hockey-related topic he refused to discuss. Crosby has played in 913 games in his career. Mario Lemieux holds the...

Newly acquired Pittsburgh Penguins forward Jared McCann hasn’t exactly made the smoothest of transitions from the climate of South Florida to his new home in Western Pennsylvania. “I might have to go to the mall and pick up some more pants. I brought a lot of shorts for some reason,”...

A little after 11 a.m. Monday, Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Justin Schultz stepped on the ice for his first full contact practice since breaking his leg in October. About a half-hour later, coach Mike Sullivan stopped a drill with a sharp tweet of his whistle and loudly dressed down his team...

Complaints were rampant on social media. Television ratings were not good. The average sports fan was not particularly enamored with the entertainment value of the New England Patriots’ 13-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan is apparently not an average sports...

Nick Bjugstad is a 6-foot-6 blue-chipper with a 24-goal NHL season on his resume. Jared McCann is a former first-round pick with a shot teammates rave about. But the new addition making the biggest impact for the Pittsburgh Penguins these days might be Teddy Blueger, the little Latvian who could,...

TORONTO – By racing in from the airport and turning in a strong performance in his first home game just hours after being traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday, forward Nick Bjugstad already made a good first impression on his new team. On Saturday, he just missed a couple...

TORONTO — Sidney Crosby scored a crackerjack first-period goal on a power-play one-timer Saturday night and was named one of the three stars of the game. He didn’t commit a glaring turnover or take an ill-timed penalty. On the surface, it looked like he turned in the type of standout...

TORONTO – Friday night’s 5-3 Penguins victory over Ottawa gave coach Mike Sullivan a reminder of the biggest reason for any winning hockey team’s success. It’s the talent, effort and execution of the players. He came to that conclusion after watching Nick Bjugstad and Jared McCann get off a plane,...

Former Pittsburgh Penguins center Derick Brassard had no trouble finding the bright side of the trade that sent him to the Florida Panthers on Friday. “Super excited to be here,” he said after taking morning skate in Florida with his new team Saturday. “Waking up and seeing the sun and...

There are lots of ways to evaluate the trade the Pittsburgh Penguins made with the Florida Panthers on Friday. Framed in one particular fashion, it appears as though general manager Jim Rutherford pulled off another impressive piece of sleight of hand. That framing is this: The Penguins traded away two...

The Pittsburgh Penguins completed a long-rumored trade of Derick Brassard on Friday, sending the third-line center, Riley Sheahan and three draft picks to the Florida Panthers for forwards Nick Bjugstad and Jared McCann. The Penguins will give Florida a second-round pick and two fourth-rounders in June’s draft. Brassard has been...

The last time Justin Schultz played in a hockey game, the sock tanlines he had acquired in a summer spent on the golf course had yet to fade. Schultz broke his leg Oct. 14 in Montreal. On Thursday, his road to recovery took another step forward as he joined the...

Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan found the suggestion literally laughable, letting out a small chuckle when he was asked about it following Thursday’s practice in Cranberry. Is there any chance the Penguins might keep center Derick Brassard on the sidelines, even if he has recovered from the upper-body injury that...

Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin sat out Thursday’s practice in Cranberry for maintenance after a particularly grueling effort the night before. By playing a physically and emotionally engaged style of hockey, recording a pair of assists and fighting fellow superstar Steven Stamkos when tensions boiled over in the third period,...

When Derick Brassard didn’t take the ice for pregame warm-ups before the Pittsburgh Penguins faced the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday night, the team took the unusual step of announcing the reason for his absence – a day-to-day upper-body injury – via Twitter. It’s not hard to understand why the...

When Derick Brassard didn’t take the ice for pregame warm-ups on Wednesday against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the team took the unusual step of announcing the reason for his absence — a day-to-day upper-body injury — via Twitter. It’s easy to understand why. According to multiple reports, general manager Jim...

After suffering a decisive 6-3 loss to the New Jersey Devils on Monday night, the Pittsburgh Penguins lamented their abysmal 1-7-1 record against last-place teams this season. There’s another side to that coin, though, and it’s one they hope will sustain them through some of the tougher dates on their...

As he’s developed into one of the top two-way forwards in the AHL over the past year or so, the thought of making his NHL debut frequently has crossed Teddy Blueger’s mind. Just when he made a concerted effort to stop thinking about it, the call to Pittsburgh came. Blueger...

No team in the NHL goes from zero to 60 faster than the Pittsburgh Penguins. Two days after being manhandled by the worst team in their division, the Penguins responded with a convincing victory over the best team in the league Wednesday night. Phil Kessel and Kris Letang had a...

As the season rolled on and total of shorthanded goals given up by his team continued to rise, Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan resisted the urge to make wholesale changes to his top power play. These are guys, Sullivan would say, who have played key roles in countless victories over...

After limping through a mediocre western road trip heading into their midseason break, the Pittsburgh Penguins had a week away from the rink to get their minds right. Instead, they got pretty much everything wrong Monday night against the New Jersey Devils. Travis Zajac had a goal and three assists,...

The NHL gave Sidney Crosby another award on Monday afternoon. He still hasn’t figured out what he’s going to do with the last one he got. Crosby was named the NHL’s first star of the week Monday, beating out San Jose forward Joe Pavelski and Minnesota goalie Devan Dubnyk for...