How can Penguins replace Jason Zucker (again)?
Even after a hard-fought 4-3 overtime road win against the Minnesota Wild on Thursday, things were a bit somber for the Penguins.
One of the most respected players on the roster, forward Jason Zucker, had his return from a long-term injury be disrupted almost as soon as it began.
In the second period, Wild forward Kevin Fiala gave Zucker a shove into the boards, causing Zucker to nearly do a complete split as he tumbled awkwardly.
Hardly an ideal motion for a player who had been laboring for the better part of nearly four months with a core muscle injury and had missed 37 of the previous 38 games because of the ailment.
“He was a bit dejected after the game for obvious reasons,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said to media in Denver on Saturday. “He’s worked so hard to get to this point. Then to not get through the game is discouraging. He’s human. He wants to play. He wants to be a part of this. He’s worked so hard to get to this point. You can imagine how he feels when he went out with the injury. We’re optimistic. We’re hopeful we’ll get good news with respect to him.”
Sullivan indicated a full evaluation of Zucker would not be available until the team returned to Pittsburgh. And with the team having a scheduled day off Sunday, that information has yet to be revealed publicly.
In the meantime, what do the Penguins do to replace Zucker on the left wing of the second line, again?
“We shuffle people around to create the balance that we’re looking for,” Sullivan said. “Looking for complementary skillsets. There’s a number of options that we have.”
Here’s a look at those options.
Rickard Rakell
In the short term, Rakell was Zucker’s immediate replacement during Saturday’s 3-2 road loss to the Colorado Avalanche.
For most of the contest, Rakell skated with Evgeni Malkin at center and Jeff Carter — typically the third-line center — on the right wing. The results were far from ideal. According to Natural Stat Trick, that trio was on the ice for only seven shot attempts and 20 shots attempts against.
Acquired via trade March 21, Rakell is still in the embryonic stages of his Penguins tenure and has not had the benefit of many practices. So he still is trying to figure out life with a new team. At the same time, the Penguins paid a fairly hefty price to acquire him from the Anaheim Ducks. The timetable for him to get acclimated is brief, fairly or not.
Primarily deployed as a left winger throughout his career, Rakell is capable of flipping to the right wing and was even deployed in that capacity to open the contest against the Wild with Malkin and Zucker.
Were the Penguins to do that with Rakell in Zucker’s absence, they could return to two options they have already utilized on the left wing of the second line.
Danton Heinen
When the Penguins signed Heinen as an unrestricted free agent last offseason, they suggested he could be a threat for 20 goals. But with 14 goals in 64 games, he would need to see a considerable surge to reach that plateau.
That said, his figures equate to a goals-per-game average of 0.22, a career-best (edging his previous high-water mark of 0.21).
Heinen isn’t going to reach the aspirations management had hoped of him. But he is exceeding — slightly — what amounts to fair expectations of him.
Evan Rodrigues
As malleable of a player as has ever played for the Penguins, Rodrigues can play all three forward positions. But he hasn’t produced much as of late in any kind of deployment.
After scoring 15 goals in his first 33 games of the season, Rodrigues has generated only two goals in his past 37 games.
Rodrigues hasn’t done much to earn a promotion as of late, but given his versatility, he’s an ideal candidate to fill in for Zucker.
Seth Rorabaugh is a TribLive reporter covering the Pittsburgh Penguins. A North Huntingdon native, he joined the Trib in 2019 and has covered the Penguins since 2007. He can be reached at srorabaugh@triblive.com.
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