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More injuries for Penguins as Schultz, Bjugstad out long-term

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All season the Pittsburgh Penguins’ injury situation has been a case of one step forward only to be followed with two steps backwards.

As soon as they get a key player back from one injury, somebody else seems to almost immediately exit the lineup with another injury.

That trend continued on Thursday when the team announced before their game against the New York Islanders that forward Patric Hornqvist will be returning to the lineup, while Nick Bjugstad and Justin Schultz are both going to be sidelined longer term.

Bjugstad had already been sidelined since Nov. 15 and is going to miss approximately eight weeks after undergoing surgery on a core muscle.

When it comes to Schultz, the Penguins would only say he will be out “longer-term” due to an undisclosed lower-body injury.

Schultz played the entire game against the Islanders on Tuesday, but exited practice on Wednesday and did not return.

The Penguins are already playing without captain Sidney Crosby and top defenseman Kris Letang.

At different points this season they have been without Crosby, Letang, Hornqvist, Bjugstad, Evgeni Malkin, Alex Galchenyuk, Jared McCann, Bryan Rust, and Brian Dumoulin.

Together that group has already combined to miss 65 man games due to injury, a number that is only going to continue to increase in the short-term. Despite all of those injuries they have still managed to remain competitive -- while playing very well -- in the Eastern Conference and remain on a 98-point pace for the season entering play on Thursday. If they can ever get healthy and stay that way they would seem to have the potential to be a top contender in the Eastern Conference. It is just a matter of whether or not they will ever be able to get there.

On Thursday the Penguins will be trying to snap the Islanders’ 15-game point streak. The Islanders rallied late in Pittsburgh on Tuesday to keep it going. The Islanders’ only loss during this streak was an overtime loss to the Penguins a couple of weeks ago when they surrendered a three-goal third period lead.

Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.