PITTSBURGH — Penguins defenseman Kris Letang has entered the NHL's COVID-19 protocol and will not be available for Saturday night's game against the Toronto Maple Leafs, coach Mike Sullivan announced.
Letang received a positive test result. As of Saturday morning, the club was still in the process of additional testing in order to confirm or debunk that initial test, as is detailed in the NHL protocol. It's too soon to say if it is a false positive or in fact a confirmed positive.
"Until we get those back, we can't definitively say for sure about where he's at," Sullivan said.
The Penguins, thanks to a cautious approach and a bit of good fortune, went through the entirety of the 2020-21 season without an in-season positive result. However, just a handful of games into the season, the virus has become an issue.
Letang, a six-time all-star, marks the third Penguins player to enter the COVID protocol this week. Center Jeff Carter and goalie Tristan Jarry both missed Thursday's practice due to virus concerns. Subsequent testing confirmed Carter's positive result. While he remains asymptomatic, he's now completing his isolation process.
Meanwhile, Jarry's result was just a false positive. He returned to practice on Friday and is scheduled to start in net against the Maple Leafs on Saturday night.
Earlier in the year, Zach Aston-Reese and Jake Guentzel were sidelined with positive COVID-19 cases that delayed their regular-season debuts. All of the Penguins players are fully vaccinated at this point, so all of the confirmed positive results can be considered breakthrough cases.
Through four games, Letang has recorded four assists, no goals and a minus-2 rating. His absence leaves a hole on the top defensive pairing and the top power-play unit.
With Letang sidelined, the three right-handed defensemen currently on the NHL roster are John Marino, Chad Ruhwedel and Mark Friedman, who is coming back from a lower-body injury. Sullivan confirmed that Friedman will be available on Saturday night. Marino would be a likely candidate to move into the top pairing. Lefty Mike Matheson, as one of the team's most offensively included blue liners, could get a chance to quarterback the top power play.
Sullivan said he also plans to speak with general manager Ron Hextall. The coach anticipates a player will be called up from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton to add more reinforcements to a defensive corps that currently includes just six able athletes, the bare minimum necessary to fill out a game-day lineup.
Letang's absence would be tough to overcome on its own. But in context? It's even more significant, erasing yet another key player from what is typically a star-studded Penguins lineup.
Sidney Crosby continues to make progress from his left wrist surgery, but he's still not ready to return. Evgeni Malkin has resumed skating but is still months away. Carter, as previously mentioned, is completing his COVID isolation period. And Bryan Rust is week-to-week with a lower-body injury.
Those five very realistically could make up the Penguins top power play at some point this season (with Guentzel somewhere in the mix). Instead, all five are sidelined.
"It's going to provide opportunities for a lot of players to play more-significant roles," Sullivan said. "Sometimes, when we have a full complement of players, it's easy to defer to the Crosbys and the Malkins to get it done. Maybe the silver lining in this is everyone in our lineup tonight has got to make a positive impact on the game. That's the mindset we have to have."
Well, this is awkward
With all the injuries and illnesses on the Penguins' roster, forward Evan Rodrigues has been promoted all the way up the depth chart to center the top line. He'll be skating alongside Kasperi Kapanen, a player with whom he has a ... well, interesting history.
"My first actual fight in the NHL was against him," Kapanen said. "It's kind of funny."
Their stories became intertwined again ahead of the 2020-21 season. Rodrigues was part of the package the Penguins sent to Toronto in exchange for Kapanen. When the Leafs chose not to extend a qualifying offer to Rodrigues as a restricted free agent, he boomeranged back to Pittsburgh, where he's skated semi-regularly alongside Kapanen.
"I think we have pretty good chemistry," Kapanen said. "He's a good passer. When I put it on his tape, he knows how to score goals."
Beijing on the back burner
While Sullivan navigates uneven waters in Pittsburgh, he's got another gig on the horizon beginning in early February as the coach of the U.S. Olympic men's hockey team.
Balancing those two responsibilities has mostly entailed putting his second job on the back burner — at least for now.
"We met as an Olympic training staff," Sullivan said. "We spent three or four days here in Pittsburgh. We game-planned for the Olympics. Everybody has roles and responsibilities with respect to that. When we left those meetings, we have a clear understanding of how we're going to play, style of play, X's and O's, all that stuff and who is responsible for what. Then we talked about, as part that process, just rollout strategy and how we were going to implement it with players."
Sullivan said that he talked with the other coaches about different contingencies and details so that once NHL camp started, he could put his energy on the Penguins.
"That's where our focus needs to be," Sullivan said. "So we did a lot of that preparation process before we went to training camp.
