{"id":293593,"date":"2026-09-25T07:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T07:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/293593\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T07:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T07:24:09","slug":"pittsburgh-penguins-player-andrei-kuzmenko-taking-leave-of-absence-over-dads-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/293593\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Penguins player Andrei Kuzmenko taking leave of absence over dad\u2019s death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                                            <a href=\"https:\/\/www.altoonamirror.com\/sports\/professional-sports\/penguins\/\" class=\"article_cat_label\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Penguins<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                                            <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/andrei-kuzmenko-2026-40-218x300.webp\"  alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Andrei Kuzmenko<\/p>\n<p>PITTSBURGH &#8212; Pittsburgh Penguins forward Andrei Kuzmenko has taken a leave of absence from the club following the death of his father in Russia.<\/p>\n<p>The team confirmed Alexander Kuzmenko&#8217;s death on Thursday. Russia-based media outlet Ren.TV reported that the 62-year-old Kuzmenko died after being attacked by a bear in Tuva, a region in Siberia, while on a fishing trip.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our deepest thoughts and sympathies are with the Kuzmenko family and their loved ones as they grieve the loss of Alexander,&#8221; Penguins president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas said in a statement. &#8220;We ask that the privacy of Andrei and the Kuzmenko family be respected at this time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kuzmenko, 30, who signed with Pittsburgh as a free agent over the summer, left the team on Thursday to be with his family in Moscow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penguins Andrei Kuzmenko PITTSBURGH &#8212; Pittsburgh Penguins forward Andrei Kuzmenko has taken a leave of absence from the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-293593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}