{"id":873389,"date":"2026-10-07T01:20:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T01:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/873389\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T01:20:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T01:20:22","slug":"what-the-penguins-practice-lines-today-tells-us-for-first-reactions-to-a-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/873389\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Penguins practice lines today tells us for first reactions to a loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

The early bump in the road of last night\u2019s loss will be the first test for the Penguins in seeing how flexible or stubborn that Dan Muse and company will be with how they deploy their lines, with the answers provided (or at least a strong hint below) based on practice setups today. Neither strategy of making sweeping changes or sticking with what they\u2019re trying to build is necessarily right, nor is the other wrong. Results of the decisions will certainly color public perception about if the coaches are sharp with their finger on the pulse of the team, or look like they\u2019re struggling for answers.<\/p>\n

Of course, one bad game isn\u2019t worth over-reacting towards any more than planning a parade rout following a 7-0 win on opening night. The season is bound to endure ups and downs, good games and bad ones. As more data and information comes in about the performances and where some areas of adjustments might be at.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of meat on the bone following how bad the Penguins looked last night.<\/p>\n

The alignment and decisions for just how much (or little) to respond right now to some of those factors above made watching for line groupings interesting at practice today. Here\u2019s how it looked.<\/p>\n

Rust was not cleared for contact the last time the team practiced, it remains unknown if his involvement strongly suggests an imminent return tomorrow night – though certainly it\u2019s looking like he will be back sooner than later at this point considering Rust also worked in with a power play group today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The conclusions we can draw today are that Dan Muse is splitting the difference about the changes he could make, not drastically altering everything but still electing to switch some placements up. Robertson is not getting much rope to stay in the top line for an extended look, his demotion from the Crosby line in the third period now carrying over another day for practice. Hendrix Lapierre got the prime opportunity of jumping up to the big line, for one day in practice at least. Kuzmenko, too, has made a move down in the shuffle, which portends good things for Ville Koivunen – who now finds himself on a line with a very good player (Rust) and arguably the team\u2019s top-performing forward lately (Kindel), whereas earlier in camp it was Kuzmenko in that position.<\/p>\n

No news of movement is not good news for Elmer Soderblom and Filip Hallander, who don\u2019t look like they\u2019re going to get called on for playing tomorrow. Neither Dewar nor Robertson got demoted all the way out of the lineup at this moment and the only change appears to be Kuzmenko making way for the returning Rust, assuming he is cleared and the plan is to have him make his season debut tomorrow night in Washington.<\/p>\n

Such a move to activate Rust from injured reserve would require one player leaving the roster to stay under the 23-player limit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The early bump in the road of last night\u2019s loss will be the first test for the Penguins…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[257,385,99],"class_list":["post-873389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-general","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}