Penguins lose two more top players to injury, including newcomer Galchenyuk

The 2019-20 season has just started and the Pittsburgh Penguins are already in hot water… 

After losing Evgeni Malkin to a soft tissue injury that could sideline him for months, the injury woes continued Wednesday as head coach Mike Sullivan announced that forward Patric Hornqvist is day-to-day with a lower-body injury. Alex Galchenyuk has just landed on IR due to a lower-body injury as well. 

According to Seth Rorabaugh of the Tribune-Review, Galchenyuk re-aggravated a previous injury.

On top of these three forwards, you unfortunately have to add Bryan Rust and Nick Bjugstad, who are on injured reserve with various injuries.

The Penguins have started the 2019-20 season with a 1-2-0 record after falling 4-1 to the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday night.

It has been speculated by TSN’s Bob McKenzie that general manager Jim Rutherford might be forced to make a trade to fill a void up front with all of these injuries. 

This is what was said on Insider Trading on TSN on Tuesday night: 

“Well Evgeni Malkin’s out the next four-to-six weeks and that’s a huge loss and there’s no way that Jim Rutherford, the general manager in Pittsburgh, can go out and trade for a player or bring anybody in who’s going to duplicate what a healthy Malkin would give you. And it doesn’t help thatNick Bjugstad is also another centre who’s out the next four weeks. But there is a situation in Pittsburgh and we’ve known even before those injuries occurred, where the Penguins have nine defencemen. We’ve heard all of theJack Johnson trade rumours. You could throw Erik Gudbranson’s name in there. Jim Rutherford is trying to move a defenceman. Now because of those injuries to Bjugstad and Malkin, if it’s possible to move a defenceman and bring back in some short-term help to plug one of those gaps in the middle of the ice, absolutely he would love to do that. But it’s almost got to be dollar-in and dollar-out. And they do have to allow that both Bjugstad and Malkin, as I said, a month to six weeks, they’re both going to be back in the lineup.”

We will have to see if Rutherford can help the Penguins in this tough time…