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The Penguins did a big line shuffle today at practice

Sidney Crosby, Phil Kessel

Sidney Crosby, Phil Kessel

AP

After scoring just 11 goals in their first seven games, the Pittsburgh Penguins have shuffled their lines in a fairly major way.

At practice today, Sidney Crosby was skating between Pascal Dupuis and Patric Hornqvist; Evgeni Malkin was centering Phil Kessel and Sergei Plotnikov; and Chris Kunitz (no points in seven games) was dropped to the third line with center Nick Bonino and rookie winger Daniel Sprong.

David Perron (no points in seven games) and Matt Cullen were on the fourth line, with Bobby Farnham, Bryan Rust, and Kevin Porter rotating in.

Crosby has spent the majority of the early season with Kessel and Kunitz, while Malkin has skated mostly with Hornqvist and Perron.

The Penguins fell to 3-4-0 with a 4-1 loss to Dallas last night.
“I thought we came out with a lot of intensity,” coach Mike Johnston told the Associated Press. “We were generating a lot of momentum with shots, but after that I thought we tried to get too cute with the puck and we passed up shots.

“That got us into trouble because Dallas is a transition team and they stung us in transition a couple times.”

On a goals-per-game basis, only Anaheim (1.00) has had more trouble scoring than Pittsburgh (1.57).

The Penguins have two tough road games coming up, Saturday in Nashville and Wednesday in Washington.

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