Geno out 2 to 3 weeks

As if the Penguins needed any more injured players, Evgeni Malkin will be out of lineup for two to three weeks with a shoulder strain. Geno would have preferred to play, and has been playing with the strain for some time, but Dan Bylsma and Ray Shero had a meeting with Geno and decided to have him take some time off and rest the shoulder. The decision is purely precautionary. Malkin will be traveling with the team to Columbus as well as their West Coast trip next week. Malkin says he feels good and is fine but does not feel comfortable.

We think they made the right choice in this situation. Why risk his shoulder further this early in the season? We like the decisions that have been made as of late.

Speaking of decisions... The Pens have decided to call up Chris Conner from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. We like this decision as well. He's small at 5-foot-8, 180 pounds but he has a lot of speed. He also knows how to score. He impressed us when we saw him in training camp both with his speed and his scoring. With no Tyler Kennedy, Conner should be able to add a little spark to the lineup. We look forward to seeing what he will contribute to the team.

The Pens will play the Columbus Blue Jackets in Columbus tonight at 7:00. Preview.

Go Pens!

Greetings from training camp

We headed down to Pens training camp last Sunday and took a ton of pictures, some of which were not worth looking at unfortunately. Below are a few of them with a story or two while we're at it. Enjoy.

Consol Energy Center from the Mellon Arena side.

Jordan Staal walking in just before the start looking a tad sleepy.

GENO!

Eric Goddard

Tyler Kennedy with Dan Bylsma practicing a little shooting.

Marc-Andre Fleury

Jordan Staal on the "faceoff."

Doing a little planning on the white board.

Brooks Orpik

Sergei Gonchar

Fleury and Dupuis having a strategy session.

Brooks Orpik

An end of session puckfest on Fleury.

Billy Guerin and Chris Kunitz chatting it up.

Sidney Crosby!

Sid is even intense in practice.

Fleury

John Curry

Sid

After session stretching.

After practice shots of the guys leaving.

Sergei Gonchar

Could it be Sidney Crosby?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! *screaming*

Nope. But everyone sure thought it was, yelling his name and demanding autographs. He finally had to say "I'm not Sid." We have to give it to them, it does look like Sid from that point of view, but Sid has bigger calves! C'mon people!

Billy Guerin showing the cooking staff his goodies. Someone asked him what it was and he responded "booze!" Laughing ensued and he proceeded to say that it was "the special kind" and that "he wouldn't drink it." He threw it in his car and then went to sign autographs. When he came back to his car he told everyone to take it easy and waved. Very likable guy with a great personality. He was taking the guys you'll see below over to the Marriott near Mellon Arena.

Alex Goligoski

Gogo and Billy's friends whose names we can't tell you. Sorry!

The real Sidney Crosby. He dropped off his "booze" and proceeded to go over to a group of people waiting for autographs just down from his Range Rover. The people were polite when asking for autographs from the lesser known guys but once Sid started walking over there it was total chaos. People didn't care about barriers or anything for that matter and basically mobbed him. He was being surrounded and quite frankly we have no idea how he deals with it. The picture below shows the crowd, just before he became completely engulfed.

Sid's Range Rover and Fleury's Lamborghini

Marc-Andre Fleury

Fans above were asking him questions to which he said he didn't know. He then was telling the guy beside him to help Sidney because he was going to get mobbed. They weren't fast enough. A woman who came out took charge and told the mob he was leaving and basically dragged him out of there and forced him into his RR. Kind of amusing really. (See below)

Fleury hiding from the mob.

Chris Kunitz

That's it! It was a good day and an enjoyable experience. We mentioned it before but Chris Conner stood out to us the most. He has good speed and was scoring left and right. Eric Tangradi looked good as well. Dan Bylsma also has this child-like love of the game that really shows. He was out skating laps and shooting pucks with the rest of the guys and enjoying every second of it. Kids along the glass were taking pictures and he would skate by and make faces at their cameras. Just an all around good guy. We can't wait for the season to start.

The Pens had their annual Black and Gold game with the Black team winning 3-2. Alex Goligoski had a hat trick to win the game for the Black team. Details here.

The Pens play the Maple Leafs Friday in their last home preseason game.

The Pens will receive their Stanley Cup rings on September 29th.

Pens win first preseason game

The Pens won their first preseason game last night 5-4 against the Blue Jackets in overtime. Sidney Crosby and Chris Kunitz each had two goals with Chris Conner having the other. Besides all the goals, the game included a couple of fights. What a way to start off the season. For all the info on the game head over to Empty Netters where Seth live blogged the game. Remember that three games will be aired by NHL Network this preseason. September 21st at 7:30, September 22nd at 7:00, and September 27th at 5:00.

We did make our trip to training camp and will get some pictures up soon hopefully. Didn't get as many good ones as we would have liked but we've got a few worth a look. We hope some of you got a chance to go, it was a good time. Chris Conner had a goal last night and we're not surprised. He was one of the guys who stuck out to us in training camp because one, he's not very big, think the Stefan Logan of the Pens. And two, he was scoring left and right on the drills (Fleury was the goalie if that makes a difference to anyone). He seems to be making a good name for himself. Eric Tangradi seems to be looking good as well.

Lastly, a nice little article on Geno for your reading pleasure.