Penguins Blog

The Pittsburgh Penguins are about to be faced with some more adversity this season.

During a 5-1 dominating win over the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday night, Sergei Gonchar left the ice in the middle of the second period after taking a hit and did not return.

It was announced on Wednesday that Gonchar suffered a broken wrist and is expected to be out for up to six weeks.

This is a pretty significant loss for the Pens. That much goes without saying.

With Gonchar out of the lineup for the better part of last season, the Penguins looked out of sync. With his return in February, the team rebounded. Granted, Chris Kunitz, Craig Adams, Bill Guerin and of course Dan Bylsma had something to do with that too, but the Penguins' powerplay was what started to click again with Gonchar back.

The Penguins are off to an 8-1 start and hold sole possession of the league's best record. They have also looked as if they haven't missed a beat since hoisting the Stanley Cup.

Gonchar's injury will be the first test of many over the course of the long season.

The likely replacement will be the newly acquired Martin Skoula, but what does that mean for the line combinations?

If it were me, I'd leave the Jay McKee and Alex Goligoski pairing alone. Those two are playing very well together.

For the top line, I have been very impressed with Kris Letang's play this season. Being that he plays a similar style to Gonchar, I would move him up alongside Brooks Orpik on the top pairing and pair Skoula with Mark Eaton.

As far as the powerplay goes, I think it's a pretty safe assumption that Letang and Goligoski will handle the quarterbacking duties.

The good thing about Gonchar's surgery last season, is that it gave both Letang and Goligoski time on the top powerplay unit. They have each seen time on the top unit this season as well, so the transition should be a fairly seamless one.

In the grand scheme of things, there are worse things that could have happened. Of course now that I've said it, I've doomed us all.

I'm very interested to see how the team will respond to this loss. They won't have much time to think about it as the Florida Panthers come to town Friday, followed on Saturday by a date with the New Jersey Devils.