Egor Chinakhov out for Penguins after practice injury
TLDR: Egor Chinakhov got hurt at practice and sat out Pittsburgh's 5-2 loss in Colorado with a lower-body injury, and there's still no timeline while the Penguins' power play sits 0-for-its-last-20.
The first sign something was wrong came before puck drop in Denver, when one of Pittsburgh's forwards just wasn't on the ice.
No sign of Chinakhov in warmups
A few minutes later the team confirmed it. The Penguins said Chinakhov was being evaluated for a lower-body injury and would not play against the Avalanche. Josh Yohe had the backstory: it happened at practice the day before.
Chinakhov was hurt in practice yesterday. No other info immediately available.
With Chinakhov out, Ville Koivunen moved up to the second line with Thomas Novak and Evgeni Malkin. It didn't save the night. Pittsburgh got off to a quick start and then got run over, losing 5-2 with Nathan MacKinnon doing MacKinnon things. Losing a top-6 winger on a road trip is bad. Losing him with no warning, after a practice, is the kind of thing that gets worse the longer nobody says anything.
Then the postgame update came, and it wasn't the good kind. There was still no word on how long he'd be out, and Yohe said Chinakhov was walking with a noticeable limp.
No update yet on how long Chinakhov is out. Was walking with a noticeable limp.
Nobody has a real answer yet. CBS Sports listed him as questionable for Saturday in Vegas and said he hadn't been ruled out. RotoWire thinks he probably misses the rest of the trip, Vegas on Saturday and Utah on Monday, with a clearer timeline maybe coming once the team gets home. When the guy is limping out of the rink, the second take sounds closer to right.
The timing is bad because the Penguins can't afford to lose offense right now, and the power play is the worst of it.
The Penguins are 0 for their last 20 on the power play.
That's 0-for-20, and now one of the shooters who should be helping fix it is in street clothes. What to watch: whether Chinakhov even travels to Vegas, who keeps that second-line spot next to Malkin, and whether the power play finally breaks through before the losses add up. If the team announces a timeline once it's back in Pittsburgh, that will tell us whether this is a few games or a lot longer.
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