Awful news for the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday: the team announced that Evgeni Malkin is expected to miss six-to-eight weeks with an upper-body injury.
Malkin suffered that issue in what looks to be a costly win from Friday. You can see the likely moment of injury in the video above.
There is about a month left in the season, so if that six-to-eight week window is accurate (we’ve seen players like Patrick Kane come back surprisingly early when the playoffs are involved), then the Penguins would need to win a round or two for Malkin to play again in 2016-17.
The high-scoring forward has been banged up at times this season, and the Penguins have been able to scrap together wins, but now they’ll need to hold onto their playoff spot without him.
This continues a rather disturbing pattern of injuries around playoff time for Pittsburgh, as it seems rare that they’ve gone into many postseasons with all of Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Kris Letang and Marc-Andre Fleury at 100 percent.
Evgeni Malkin will have missed 138 games since 2009-10. Crosby has missed 122 since then. Letang 120.
— Adam Gretz (@AGretz) March 12, 2016
They’re probably not quite “used to it” even if they’ve been through this before.
One small silver lining:
There is some good news: Malkin's injury does not require surgery. More details coming.
— Josh Yohe (@JoshYohe_PGH) March 12, 2016