"I thought they had good practices," head coach Mike Sullivan said. "There were no restrictions on their participation so that's encouraging."
Schultz (seven games missed) and Rust (three) have been recovering from lower-body injuries.
"I feel good. Hopefully everything feels good (Friday)," Schultz said. "I feel normal. Hopefully everything goes well overnight."
"I'm feeling better today," Rust said. "Thankfully, this has been a rather quick recovery. Hopefully, things keep moving in the right direction."
Both injuries were sustained during practice. Rust suffered his injury after a freak fall during a morning skate last weekend. He initially thought he was OK, but ended up missing the next three games.
"You just shake your head, just bad luck, losing an edge," Rust said. "I got my skate off and things got worse over the course of the day."
Defensemen Kris Letang and Jack Johnson were absent from the practice session. Letang was given a maintenance day, while Johnson continues to recover from an illness that kept him out of Pittsburgh's 3-0 victory against St. Louis on Wednesday night.
"(Johnson) does feel much better, but he hasn't had a lot of food in him over the last 24 hours or so," Sullivan said. "So, we thought it was best to keep him at home and give him an opportunity to recover."
The Penguins used the following workflow at practice…
Guentzel-Malkin-Rust
Kahun-McCann-Noesen
Aston-Reese - Blueger-Tanev
Galchenyuk-Lafferty-Simon
Marino-Schultz
Pettersson-Ruhwedel
Riikola-Trotman
