Penguins’ injury updates: Brandon Tanev misses practice, Jason Zucker ‘making progress’
The injury states of Evgeni Malkin and Brandon Tanev remained status quo, but coach Mike Sullivan had better news about one of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ other top nine forwards.
Jason Zucker again skated Tuesday morning, taking the ice with skating/skills development coach Ty Hennes before Tuesday’s team practice in Cranberry Township.
“He’s continuing to make progress,” Sullivan said of Zucker, who typically serves as Malkin’s left wing on the second line. “Obviously, the fact that he’s skating in full equipment (is positive) and the types of drills that he’s doing are advancing as well, so that’s encouraging from that standpoint.”
It was exactly one month prior to Tuesday that Zucker suffered a lower-body injury during a game against the Washington Capitals. At the time, Sullivan said Zucker would be out “longer-term.” Zucker, who has missed the past 15 Penguins games, also skated over the weekend.
Malkin missed the past three games because of a lower-body injury, and Tanev the past two because of an upper-body ailment. Sullivan said the status of each gas not changed.
On Tanev, Sullivan during a video conference call with media said: “He’s still day-to-day. We’re taking each day as it comes, and we’ll see where it goes.”
Sullivan said Malkin has not skated in the week since he suffered his injury.
“He’s in the process of his rehab,” Sullivan said.
The only other injury update Sullivan gave was on defensemen Mark Friedman, who hasn’t played since March 4 — two games into his Penguins’ tenure. Friedman did not take part in the Penguins’ full team practice Tuesday and instead skated with the taxi squad.
Sullivan said that was not a sign Friedman had a setback in recovery from an upper-body injury.
“He’s continuing to make progress,” Sullivan said. “It was more logistics. With the amount of defensemen that we have, we didn’t want to practice with more than eight defensemen today, so we had to make decisions there.”
Chris Adamski is a TribLive reporter who has covered primarily the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2014 following two seasons on the Penn State football beat. A Western Pennsylvania native, he joined the Trib in 2012 after spending a decade covering Pittsburgh sports for other outlets. He can be reached at cadamski@triblive.com.
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