Sullivan confirms Hornqvist is injured.... again.

The Pittsburgh Penguins simply just can not catch a break this season.

The Penguins are coming off a big win over the New York Islanders earlier this week but that win also came at a cost, what looks to be another potential injury to forward Patric Hornqvist. It remains unclear what happened to Hornqvist during the Islanders game on Thursday but we now know for a certainty that he has in fact been injured. 

Hornqvist would leave in the very first period of that Thursday night match up after logging just 6 minutes and 44 seconds of ice time and he did not return. There were obviously fears that the veteran forward had come back too quickly from a concussion that he had suffered back in November and now those fears have been amplified considerably. On Saturday the Penguins officially confirmed a new injury to Hornqvist via head coach Mike Sullivan but it has to be said that Sullivan insisted that this was not related to the concussion Hornqvist had suffered earlier in the season. 

That being said though it is very easy to be skeptical of the Penguins announcement as they have also reavealed that it is indeed an upper body injury that Hornqvist is currently dealing with. Additionally the wording of the official announcement from the Penguins has raised some eyebrows in and of itself as head coach Mike Sullivan's comments could be interpreted as an admission that Hornqvist is indeed suffering from some form of concussion.

“He is day-to-day with an upper-body injury," said Sullivan. "It is not related to his previous concussion.”

It's the "previous concussion" in his wording that has drawn some curious questions from fans on social media but I have to assume that Sullivan was not trying to imply that Hornqvist is dealing with yet another concussion. That being said though it's fully possible that Sullivan simply meant that Hornqvist's previous concussion is not related to the one that he is suffering from now. Until we get more details on the nature of this injury from the Penguins how to correctly interpret the choice of words from Sullivan is a guessing game and your guess is as good as mine.

[pub]