Penguins Gameday 01/05/10 - Thrashers

Well, there's a bit of news across Pens Universe today. Chris Kunitz is out 4-6 weeks with an abdominal tear that requires surgery and Luca Caputi got the call from Shero to skate alongside Malkin and company. Though it confused us twitter followers since the news was reported in reverse order. Nevertheless.

Fellow PU staff member Josh Phelan spoke of Kunitz original injury back in December, here and here.

As much as you might see this as a bad thing Kunitz is out, I hate to say this might actually be good for the Pens. In my opinion they needed a change of some sort. Did I vote for a trade on the side-bar? I did. Though I was thinking more a minor trade, shake things up a little. And lets be honest, Kunitz isn't having the best year, though likely due to this lingering injury. Kunitz is third worst among active forwards with a shooting percentage of 8.1%, compared to 15.1% last year. Only Kennedy (7.6%) and Talbot (3.7%) are lower. A more consistent winger would be nice.

Enter Luca Caputi...or Eric Tangradi...or Mark Letstu. These will be the guys likely to circulate through the system until some consistency is found.

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Now with that all said, we're still riding the 5 game losing streak. But this temporary change in personnel might just be what we need. The good news for the Pens is that Atlanta comes into tonight's game having lost two straight games and are just 1-6-3 in their last 10, so there's little confidence in this team as well. Though if you remember last game on November 21st we almost squandered our 3-0 lead in the third. Afinogenov scored in the last 20 seconds to put Atlanta within one goal. Luckily we held on, thank Skoula for his two goals. Though as you know, recently we haven't held on to our leads very tight.

Here are the highlights from the last meeting and the PensUniverse recap here...

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