There are five games on the NHL schedule Monday, including two televised nationally in the United States and Canada. Here are five things to watch today, along with the complete game schedule.<\/p>\n
Return of Malkin and possibly Crosby vs. Avalanche<\/p>\n
Evgeni Malkin<\/a> will be back, and Sidney Crosby<\/a> could be, too, when the Pittsburgh Penguins visit Nathan MacKinnon<\/a>\u00a0and the NHL-leading Colorado Avalanche (9:30 p.m. ET; SN-PIT, ESPN, Prime, TVAS). Malkin finished serving the five-game suspension he received for slashing Buffalo Sabres defenseman Rasmus Dahlin<\/a>\u00a0on March 5. Pittsburgh (33-18-5) went 2-1-2 in Malkin\u2019s absence, including 1-1-1 through the first three games of its five-game road trip, and is tied with the New York Islanders for second in the Metropolitan Division. Crosby hasn\u2019t played since sustaining a lower-body injury while playing for Team Canada against Team Czechia in the quarterfinals of the 2026 Winter Olympics on Feb. 18, but he has been skating with the Penguins during their trip. MacKinnon, who has 21 points (six goals, 15 assists) and is plus-14 in his past 12 games, trails Connor McDavid<\/a>\u00a0by five points for the NHL lead with 109 (44 goals, 65 assists) and is a League-best plus-57 in 64 games. Colorado (44-12-9) has lost two of its past three games and its lead on the Dallas Stars for first the Central Division and League standings has been cut to three points.<\/p>\n Panarin’s Garden party<\/p>\n Artemi Panarin<\/a>\u00a0will return to Madison Square Garden to face the New York Rangers (7 p.m. ET; FDSNW, MSG) for the first time since the forward was traded to the Los Angeles Kings on Feb. 4. The 34-year-old played seven seasons with the Rangers and is ninth in their history with 607 points (205 goals, 402 assists) in 482 games. He has 12 points (three goals, nine assists) in 10 games with the Kings (27-24-15), who trail the Seattle Kraken by two points for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference. New York (28-30-8) has won four in a row and is 6-1-2 since returning from the Olympic break. Alexis Lafreniere<\/a>\u00a0has nine goals in his past 11 games to move within one of reaching 20 for the second time in his career (28 goals in 2023-24).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are five games on the NHL schedule Monday, including two televised nationally in the United States and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-540230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}