Here are the biggest news and notes coming out of today’s session.
RUST SUSPENDED THREE GAMES
The NHL’s Department of Player Safety announced on Tuesday that Penguins forward Bryan Rust has been suspended for three games for an illegal check to the head on Canucks forward Brock Boeser at the end of Pittsburgh’s 3-2 win.
“I think three games is a lot. I don't agree with it. As an organization, we don’t agree with it,” Dan Muse said.
The Penguins head coach did acknowledge a couple of times that the league has a tough job when it comes to assessing these plays. A full explanation of their decision is here. Muse provided his perspective on what happened:
“In terms of the play, it's the end of the game. He's doing everything he can to just get back to the netfront and not allow another shot on net in the closing seconds. Kind of the way he comes in there, he's trying to get on the defensive side. When you look at the video, too, there's a lot of things happening there. And so, there's the visual of it that you see, but there's also, I think, the intent and how all those things unfolded.”
That, paired with the reputation Rust has built up over nearly 700 games in this league, is why Muse feels they didn’t necessarily make the right call.
“Bryan Rust is a guy where you know what you're going to get from him every night,” Muse said. “He's a guy that works his (butt) off every day. He's a guy that's heart and soul. One thing he's not is a dirty player. He's going to do everything he can to help the team win. ... He's a guy who works, but he also plays the game the right way, and he plays it clean.”
It’s a huge loss for the Penguins, who will be without Rust for Thursday against Chicago, Saturday versus the Rangers, and next Tuesday versus Ottawa.
“Obviously, Rusty is a guy who plays just about every role you can imagine on this hockey team, and does it very well,” Muse said. “And so now, it's going to be an opportunity for other guys there to come in and to get an opportunity to fill that hole while he’s gone.”
The decision wasn’t handed down until practice was wrapping up, so Rust did line rushes in his usual spot alongside Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell. But the coaching staff did work Egor Chinakhov into his spot on the top power-play unit with Crosby, Rakell, Evgeni Malkin and Erik Karlsson. Ben Kindel took some reps there as well.
“Obviously, we looked at some things today in practice as options. We're going to get back together as a staff, have some further discussions,” Muse said. “You go into the start of today, we didn't know what that ruling was going to be. We knew we wanted to try some different things and have some different options in place, but we're going to still have some more discussions before we totally firm that up.”
