After a fair amount of confusion this morning about what means what when it came to Jordan Staal’s match penalty last night, it’s come out that Staal will be available to play tonight against the Islanders in Pittsburgh.
Staal received a match penalty for sucker punching Brandon Prust of the Rangers last night. A match penalty comes with a mandatory one-game suspension unless the league rescinds that. NHL.com’s Dan Rosen got direct clarification on Staal’s status after some confusion over the announcement that no further action would be taken against Staal.
This means that the Pens will have at least one stellar forward in the lineup tonight after it was announced today that Evgeni Malkin was retroactively put on injured reserve and won’t play tonight.